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Of his first meeting with Johnson Boswell says, concerning this 
portrait : ' I found that I had a very perfect idea of Johnson's 
figure from the portrait of him painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds 
soon after he had published his Dictionary in the attitude of 
sitting in his easy chair in deep meditation, which was the first 
picture his friend did for him, which Sir Joshua very kindly 
presented to me, and from wnich an engraving has been made 
for this work.' 



SELECTIONS 

FROM THE WORKS OF 

SAMUEL JOHNSON 

EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 



BY 

CHARLES GROSVENOR OSGOOD 

Preceptor in English in Princeton University 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1909 



Copyright, iqoq, 
By 

h^nry holt and company 



248740 



/; 



PREFACE 



One day. at Mrs. Thrale's, Johnson remarked, in an 
1 indulgent humor ' : ' I think there is no impropriety in 
a man's publishing as much as he chooses of any 
author, if he does not put the rest out of the way. 7 
His words lend one perhaps the best excuse for a 
book of this kind. It is in the hope of putting the 
rest in the way that these selections have been gathered 
and edited; and enough will have been done, if they 
should prove the means of correcting some error .of 
.vision, or of helping to find life in that which has 
seemed dead. 

The introduction may appear at times too emphatic 
and opinionated, or too condensed and barren of illus- 
tration. But opinion often creates opinion in others, 
if only by reaction; and such passages as those on 
Johnson's style or his theory of criticism, or on the 
poetry of his time, may suggest to teachers various 
useful and agreeable studies in quest of illustration 
and evidence. 

Rasselas is unrepresented because it has been well 
edited in this series by Professor Emerson. The selec- 
tions are entire, except the Life of Addison, from which 
the long quotation of Dennis's tedious remarks on Cato 
has been in large part omitted. No biographical sketch 
of Johnson beyond a chronological outline has seemed 
necessary. If a shorter account than Boswell's is desired, 
it may be found in Sir Leslie Stephen's Life of Johnson 
(English Men of Letters), or, shorter still, in his article 
in the Dictionary of National Biography. Macaulay 
may be read with interest, but not for Johnson's sake. 



h PREFACE 

The memory of Dr. G. Birkbeek Hill is, by his 
noble work as an editor and essayist, already insepar- 
able from that of Boswell and Johnson, and cannot 
but be affectionately honored by every devoted reader 
of their works. No man will ever have done so much 
and so well as he to make their companionship accessible 
and familiar to those who need it and enjoy it. An 
editor of Johnson must henceforth be deeply in debt to 
him; and while it is easy to acknowledge definite borrow- 
ings, it is hard to measure or describe the inspiration and 
insight which one owes to his labors. 

I wish to thank Mr. A. Edward Newton for the 
portraits which accompany this edition; and Pro- 
fessor Lane Cooper for a careful criticism of the In- 
troduction. 

Princeton, July 31, 1909. 



CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION 1- 

Chronological Outline of Johnson's Life . . lix 

London 3 

The Vanity of Human Wishes 12 

Prologue for the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre 22 

Letter to Lord Chesterfield 26 

Preface to the Dictionary 29 

The Rambler 

No. 4. The modern Form of Romances preferable 

to the ancient 61 

No. 5. A Meditation on Spring 67 

No. 14. The Difference between an Author's Writ- 
ings and his Conversation . . . . . 71 
No. 16. The Dangers and Miseries of Literary 

Eminence 77 

No. 50. A virtuous Old Age always reverenced . 82 

No. 60. The Dignity and Usefulness of Biography 87 

No. 72. The Necessity of Good Humor ... 92 

No. 93. The Prejudices and Caprices of Criticism 96 

No. 102. The Voyage of Life 101 

No. 108. Life sufficient to all Purposes if well 

employed 106 

No. 117. The Advantages of living in a Garret . 110 
No. 120. The History of Almamoulin, the Son of 

Nouradin 116 

No. 134. Idleness an anxious and miserable State 122 

No. 137. The Necessity of Literary Courage . . 126 

No. 145. Petty Writers not to be despised . . 131 
v 



VI 



CONTENTS 



No. 154. The Inefficacy of Genius without Learn- 
ing 

No. 169. Labor necessary to Excellence . 

No. 170. The History of Misella . 

No. 171. The History of Misella, concluded . 

No. 173. Unreasonable Fears of Pedantry . 

No. 188. Favor often gained with little Assistance 
from the Understanding 

No. 191. The Busy Life of a Young Lady . 

No. 203. The Pleasures to be sought in' Futurity 

No. 204. The History of Ten Days of Seged, Em 
peror of Ethiopia . . 

No. 205. The History of. Seged, concluded 

The Adventurer 

No. 102. Infelicities of Retirement to Men of 
Business 



135 
140 

144 
149 

155 

159 
163 

168 

172 
177 



The Idler 


No. 


23. 


No. 


41. 


No. 


45. 


No. 


59. 


No. 


60. 


No. 


61. 


No. 


88. 



The Uncertainty of Friendship 

On the Death of a Friend . 

Portraits defended 

Books fall into Neglect . 

Minim, the Critic 

Minim, the Critic, concluded 

What have ye done? . 



. 182 

. 189 

. 192 

. 195 

. 198 

. 200 

. 205 

. 208 

No. 101. Omar's Plan of Life .! ... 210 

The Life of Savage . . . ' 215 

The Life of Addison 318 

On the Death of Levett 364 

Letters 

To William Strahan . . . . . . .366 

To Miss Boothby 367 

. . 367 

. 368 

. 369 

. 369 

. 370 

. 370 

. 370 



To Dr. Burney 

To Mrs. Johnson 

To Miss Porter 

To his Mother 

To his Mother 

To Miss Porter 

To his Mother 



(his mother) 



CONTENTS vii 

To a Lady . 371 

To the Earl of Bute 372 

To Bennet Langton . . . . . . .373 

To Mr. Boswell 374 

To Mrs. Thrale 375 

To James Macpherson 375 

To Mrs. Thrale 376 

To Mrs. Boswell . . . 378 

To the King . . .378 

To Mrs. Boswell 379 

To Mr. Boswell . 380 

To Mrs. Thrale 381 

To Mr. Boswell 382 

To James Elphinston 383 

To Mr. Boswell 3S4 

To Mrs. Thrale 384 

To Miss Porter 385 

To Sir Joshua Reynolds 386 

To Sir Joshua Reynolds 386 

To Mrs. Thrale 387 

To the Reverend Dr. Taylor 387 

To Miss Jane Langton 388 

To Mrs. Thrale 389 

To the Lord High. Chancellor 390 

To Dr. Burney 391 

Prayers and Meditations 392 

Kotes 399 



INTRODUCTION ] 



It has been a custom for nearly one hundred years 
to denounce the Eighteenth Century: and one of the 
loudest accusers is Carlyle. He was, to be sure, more 
deeply interested in that period than in any other, and 
he devoted to it the most brilliant and elaborate of his 
historical studies. But he did not approve of it. What- 
ever he disliked was to him characteristic of the Eigh- 
teenth Century; whatever he liked was an exception 
to it. He calls it ' the sceptical century ' ; ' opulent in 
accumulated falsities ' ; ' swindling.' i spendthrift ' ; 
1 unheroic, godless '; 'a time of quacks and quackery ? ; 
1 unbelieving ' ; l mechanical ? ; ' prosaic ? ; ' selfish 7 ; 
1 trivial J ; i a decrepit, death-sick Era of Cant.' This 
clamor has flown from mouth to mouth, and reverberates 
even to the present in well-worn epithets and vain repeti- 
tions of criticism. Johnson's time is still spoken of as 
the Age of Doubt; the Age of Reason; the Age of 
Pseudo-classicism, or of Artificiality: with other nick- 
names of a like sort. Nicknames are perhaps never quite 
fair; they exaggerate, caricature, or disparage, but they 
never tell the whole truth, and often not the most im- 
portant part of it. 

During such leisure, then, as we find for the study 

1 References are often given to the Life (Dr. Hill's edition of 
Boswell's Life of Johnson; to Misc. (Johnsonian Miscellanies, 
edited by Hill) ; to Lett. (The Letters of Samuel Johnson, 
edited by Hill) ; and to the Lives (Johnson's Lives of the 
Poets, edited by Hill). 

i is 



X INTRODUCTION 

of Johnson's time, it will be better to forget the nick- 
names and denunciations, and to contemplate with open 
mind some of the great achievements of that age ; nor will 
it be necessary to look for them far beyond Johnson's 
circle. 

It was the time when Reynolds and Gainsborough were 
painting portraits full of inexhaustible beauty and 
charm; when Goldsmith was creating his exquisite mas- 
terpieces in genre; when Burke was expressing his noble 
thought in classic eloquence;- when Gibbon led forth 
the gorgeous but fading pageant of ancient Rome. Little 
or none of their essential greatness do these achieve- 
ments owe to mere Reason, or Doubt, or Pseudo- 
classicism. 

More notable than these are the deeds, opinions, and 
character of Johnson, together with his portrait from 
BoswelFs hand. Modern haste and prejudice have done 
much to warp our notions of Boswell and Johnson. 
A passing glance at Boswell's masterpiece, an amused 
impression of Macaulay's brilliant caricature, are about 
the sum of the common ignorance of Johnson. To most 
men he is a ponderous, uncouth, slovenly figure, gruff, 
ill-mannered, absent, unapproachable, unconsciously 
funny, blurting out his prejudices in unwieldy periods, 
and chiefly celebrated for sitting up late, drinking 
infinite tea, and writing an obsolete dictionary. And 
if aught else beside, he is a hide-bound Tory and Jacob- 
ite, hating all Whigs, Scots, French, and Americans, 
puffed up with insular pride, indifferent to the beauties 
of nature, to the arts, to all the finer things of life; 
venting himself in pedantic bombast and prosy moralistic 
abstractions, which have long since been relegated to the 
rubbish-heap of literature. 

There is but one way to understand a great portrait, 
whether it be the work of pencil or pen. Sit down 
patiently and open-mindedly before it; return to it 
from time to time; consider it familiarly, as if it were 






INTRODUCTION xi 

in the flesh — as if, for example, you were yourself 
living in Johnson's time; imagine yourself in his place, 
or him in yours. Then the merely grotesque and whim- 
sical traits begin to fade, the superficial and illusory 
veil is slowly withdrawn, as a living man comes forth 
to meet us, full of life, strength, charm, and even of 
kindness and affection. He may indeed become what 
he has already been for many — the advisor, consoler, 
and intimate friend. There lives, for example, in a large 
American city, a busy man of affairs, who has essentially 
educated himself through years of deepening familiarity 
with BoswelFs Life of Johnson. Since early manhood 
he has found for his scant leisure no other literary 
companion so responsive. At the age of thirty-one 
Stevenson wrote to a friend that he was reading Bos well 
'daily by way of a Bible; I mean to read Bosivell now 
until the day I die.' x Sir Leslie Stephen said : 1 1 had 
the good fortune when a boy, to read what is to me, I 
must confess, the most purely delightful of all books — 
I mean BoswelFs Life of Johnson. I read it from 
cover to cover, backward and forward, over and over, 
through and through, till I nearly knew it by heart.' 2 
i On his deathbed,' says his biographer, l he suffered 
little pain. He could see a friend almost every day. 
He was surrounded by the tenderest love and devotion, 
and he still could read.' Here follows a considerable 
list of authors. i Then, when other books failed, he fell 
back upon the old, old story. Need I name it? He 
told his nurse that his enjoyment of books had begun, 
and would end with BoswelFs Life of Johnson/ 3 

II 

It is commonly said, after Macaulay, that Johnson 
lives only in Boswell, while his own books are dead, 

1 Let*™? 2 133 

2 Maitland,'/" ' r jes u € Stephen, p. 39. 

*ma. } p. 48 



xii INTRODUCTION 

as they deserve to be; that had it not been for Boswell, 
Johnson would be now comparatively unheard of. 
Johnson's works are overshadowed by his conversations 
in the Life, but had the Life never been written, yet such 
is the vigor and sanity of his writings that they must 
have found many readers who now know Johnson only 
as revealed by his devoted friend. At any rate they 
furnish the best commentary on Boswell's portrayal, and 
in many essential ways supplement it. Without them 
one's acquaintance is imperfect. Even Boswell, who 
knew Johnson's conversation better than any one else 
could, was a devoted student of his works; and an un- 
prejudiced reader must find in them as great a Johnson 
as Boswell has shown us, expressed with as much clear- 
ness, originality, and power, and often with greater 
eloquence. 

In some sense every great man is greater than his 
works, and genius humbles itself to every form of ex- 
pression it employs. But Johnson's genius humbled 
itself more than that of most writers, both in his books 
and his conversation. At the conclusion of The Bambler 
he wrote : i Though in every long work there are some 
joyous intervals of self -applause, when the attention 
is recreated by unexpected facility, and the imagination 
soothed by incidental excellencies; yet that toil with 
which performance struggles after the idea is so irksome 
and disgusting, and so frequent is the necessity of rest- 
ing below the perfection we imagined within our reach, 
that seldom any man obtains more from his endeavors 
than a painful conviction of his defects, and a continual 
resuscitation of desires which he feels himself unable 
to gratify.' Johnson chose no one great literary form 
in which to excel; he wrote but little verse, nor was that 
his best work. He did not write for the love of it. i No 
man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.' 1 
' You may have pleasure fr*> ' ' - *f ter it is over, if 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

you Have written weii ; Dut you doii r f go 'willingly to it 
again/ * His actual writing was not the uncontrollable 
exuberance of pent-up feeling or conviction. It was 
done partly to earn his living, partly from sense of 
necessity that he should cast into some permanent form 
the exceptional gifts that he had received from nature. 
His superiority to his works no doubt owed something 
to his natural laziness. He praised others for long 
and careful elaboration of their works; his own were 
written with incredible speed, and often went to the 
press without his perusal. 2 But disappointing as they 
were to him, they are an opening, however con- 
fined, through which the full stature of the man is 
discernible. 

Johnson was the man of letters, a literary Jack-of- 
all-trades — reviewer, poet, dramatist, essayist, lexicog- 
rapher, narrator, critic, biographer, letter- writer, com- 
poser of prayers for himself, and of dedications, pro- 
logues, and epitaphs for others ; and if he did not succeed 
equally in all ways, yet each species of his composition 
is a facet of the whole, addhig something to the lustre 
of his genius. 



1 Life 4. 219. 

2 ' His most excellent works were struck off at a heat, with 
rapid exertion ' (Life 1. 71). Malone makes this note: 'He 
told Dr. Burney that he never wrote any of his works that were 
printed twice over. Dr. Burner's wonder at seeing several 
pages of his Lives of tJie Poets in manuscript, with scarce a 
blot or erasure, drew this observation from him.' To this 
Dr. Hill has added the following note : '"He wrote forty-eight 
of the printed octavo pages of the Life of Savage at a sit- 
ting" (Life 1. 166), and a hundred lines of the Vanity of 
Human Wishes in a day" (ibid. 2. 15). The Ramblers "were 
written in haste as the moment pressed, without even being 
read over by him before they were printed" (1. 203). In the 
second edition, however, he made corrections. " He composed 
Rasselas in the evenings of one week" (1. 341). « The False 
Alarm was written between eight o'clock on Wednesday eight 
and twelve o'clock on Thursday night " (Piozzi's Anecdotes, p. 
41). "The Patriot," he says, "was called for on a Friday, 
was written on a Saturday"' (?. ?«?)_ 



xiv INTRODUCTION 



III 



London and The Vanity of Human Wishes are the 
best known of Johnson's few attempts in verse. For 
some sixty or seventy years it had been the fashion 
to l imitate ' Latin writers of the Empire, that is, to 
adapt the ideas and illustrations of some selected poem 
to contemporary life. The practice was much stimulated 
by Pope's brilliant Imitations of Horace. Such a per- 
formance was of course purely academic, and in John- 
son's case, as in many another, it served only as a kind 
of test of his right to recognition in the literary world. 
1 No man ever became great by imitation/ says John- 
son, 1 and his own imitations, so far as they imitate, 
exhibit only his cleverness. Nobody would recognize 
this sooner than he. Of poetic imitation in general his 
estimate was low. Thirty years later he must have had 
his own imitations in mind when he spoke thus in his 
Life of Pope : ' What is easy is seldom excellent ; such 
imitations cannot give pleasure to common readers; 
the man of learning is sometimes surprised and de- 
lighted by an unexpected parallel; but the comparison 
requires knowledge of the original which will likewise 
often detect strained applications. Between Roman 
images and English manners there will be an irrec- 
oncilable dissimilitude, and the work will be generally 
uncouth and parti-colored; neither original nor trans- 
lated, neither ancient nor modern.' 

Furthermore Johnson's imitations bear most of the 
external marks of ' Eighteenth Century poetry.' For 
half a century and more poetry had suffered from the 
habit of proceeding from the abstract to the concrete, 
from the general to the particular. A poet chooses as 
his subject some general or abstract topic, a- id his 
poem must be made up of well-arranged concrete 
illustrations or l images ' suggested by the general sub- 

1 Below, 139. 16 : Rasselas, chap. 10. 



INTRODUCTION xv 

ject. Hence poems on Women, Riches, Dunces, Seasons, 
and the Pleasures of Hope, each subject abundantly illus- 
trated by a collection of idylls, stories, or descriptions. 
On the other hand, Macbeth, Paradise Lost, and The 
King and the Booh proceed in the opposite direction, 
choosing one concrete instance from human life, but 
leaving the hearer to generalize from the particular 
instance described. In Goldsmith's poems there is a 
conflict of the two methods. The Traveler recommended 
itself to contemporaries as a philosophic poem on Gov- 
ernment; The Deserted Village as a treatise on Luxury 
and Emigration. But Goldsmith's genius forsook him in 
the abstract parts of the poem, and spent itself with 
so much power on his illustrations, that they constitute 
the real poem, and through his landscapes in the Trav- 
eler, or his miniature of Auburn, or his portrait of the 
old parson, we discern elemental truths of life far 
deeper and greater than the professed theories of the 
poems. After the manner of the times, Johnson's Lon- 
don is on the general subject, London, and is composed 
of detailed illustrations of London as seen or imagined 
by the clever literary novice of 1738. The Vanity of 
Human Wishes proceeds to illustrate its general subject 
with concrete examples suggested by those in the tenth 
satire of Juvenal. 

To the poet of the Eighteenth Century arrangement 
and transition were very important. His examples must 
be neatly arranged in natural order, and joined by easy 
transitions. Hence such unity as his poem possessed. 1 
The real form and unity that arise only from one 
dominant and supreme emotion within they seldom show. 
Johnson's two imitations had only to follow Juvenal in 
each case to realize the artificial unity; but of the two. 
only T' ? Vanity of Human Wishes can be said to con- 
tain sufficiently deep and steady conviction and feeling 
to attain to real unity. 

1 Cf. Johnson's criticism of Savage, p. 250. 



xvi 

Further traits of the times these poems show in their 
use of stock poetic words and phrases; of incessant 
personification that does not personify. Each noun 
must have its epithet — i rosy ' lips, i radiant ' eyes, and 
' modest ' innocence — after the late classical manner. 
Each vowel must have its right place in the succession 
of sounds in the line; each thought and phrase and 
cadence must be confined within the balance of the 
rimed couplet. 

This form of poetic composition cast a deep spell 
upon five or six generations of our ancestors, but its 
charm is now departed. No longer can it captivate the 
ear, or stir the imagination, as once it did. The modern 
reader makes nothing of it but a monotonous sing-song. 
We do injustice to the rimed couplet, and the chief 
reason is that the art of reading aloud, and the art 
of listening, have declined almost to extinction, so that 
the ear is no longer discerning. We read with the eye; 
in Johnson's time they read with the ear. To the eye 
Johnson's cadences mean nothing, and he who can make 
us hear them as Johnson could have done is not to be 
found. Only by the most practised and measured utter- 
ance of his numbers, with lively auricular imagination, 
can we begin to realize the sonorous power and rhythmic 
charm that lay in the rimed couplet as conceived by 
Dryden or Johnson. It was not, to be sure, an instru- 
ment for the tumultuous and intermittent feelings of 
modern poetry; but the constant, deep, and mature emo- 
tions that belong to the even temperament, or rest upon 
long experience, it conveys with great power. 

When the inferior elements of imitation and manner- 
ism have been subtracted from Johnson's satires, there yet 
remains something nobly genuine. London is vitalized 
with a strong man's spirited resistance. He repels the 
obstacles which the age throws in the way of real man- 
hood. He struggles to cast off the weight which is 
crushing many choice spirits of his time; and he con- 



iNTHODUCTlOii xvii 

tends neither in confidence nor in despair, but with 
indomitable energy. In London he did not discern 
the nature of his antagonists. The increasing foreign 
element, and the domination of Sir Robert TValpole, were 
not the real evils of the times, as he soon learned. But 
his energy and courage, however misdirected in this case, 
were permanent elements of nobleness in his character, 
which asserted themselves with greater effect on every 
right occasion throughout the rest of his life. 

The Vanity of Human Wishes is wiser, more natural, 
more deeply impassioned than London. The harsh 
irritation of Johnson's earlier hardships has subsided, 
and his sympathy is broader and more profound. Its 
most original and greatest passages 1 are filled with 
tender pity for the weakness of even the strongest man, 
and for the futility of unaided human effort to subdue 
the dominant forces of the world. These lines came 
spontaneously from a full heart. As one grows familiar 
with their solemn cadence, and touched with their feel- 
ing, he ceases to wonder that the poem was a favorite 
of the romanticists Scott and Byron, or that Johnson 
himself, as he was once reciting the lines on a young 
aspirant to a scholar's fame, faltered, and burst into 
tears. 

IV 

While Johnson was engaged on his Dictionary, his 
mind found release and recreation from such exacting 
labor in the semi-weekly essays of The Rambler. Gold- 
smith spoke in the name of his own generation at least, 
when he said that Johnson's fame was based upon 
these essays. Though hurriedly written, for the imme- 
diate purpose of getting bread and butter, yet they are 
not slovenly or unfinished. But his well-known haste 
in composition is more apparent than real. He was 

1 Those on patronage (73-82), on the pride of learning (135- 
164), on military pride (191-222), on the helplessness of man 
(346-356). 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

above forty when he began The Rambler. Up to this 
time his writings had been almost entirely of ephem- 
eral nature. There had been slothful lapses of his 
energy, for which, even in the days of his poverty, he 
bitterly reproached himself. But these years had not 
been so fruitlessly spent as he imagined; they were 
really a period of slow elaboration through experience, 
thought, and assimilation, and from these sprang his 
permanent work, mature in energy and form. However 
brief the time of execution, his. writing was thus saved 
from shallowness, nonsense, or the impotence of a per- 
functory effort. 

As in his satires he imitated Juvenal, so in The 
Rambler he imitated Addison. His account of the 
origin of the periodical essay in his Life of Addison, 
and his appreciation of The Spectator there expressed, 
show his great, admiration of Addison's work. But his 
imitation of Addison is after all external. He chose the 
literary form which Addison perfected — a choice de- 
termined more by material necessity, than by mere 
admiration or the affinity of genius. Beyond this Addi- 
son indicated the general range of topics for treatment, 
and now and then furnished him with a definite subject. 1 

1 Speaking of the origin of his .essays Johnson says in The 
Rambler 184 : ' A careless glance upon a favorite author, or 
transient survey of the varieties of life, is sufficient to supply 
the first hint or. seminal idea.' The most obvious hint that he 
got from earlier periodical writers came from Addison's series 
of criticisms on Paradise Lost in The Spectator. Milton was 
still a popular poet in the days of the Rambler (R.), and John- 
son wrote five essays on the versification of Milton, and two on 
Samson Agonistes. Other subjects which may have been wholly 
or in part suggested by The Tatler (T.) and The Spectator 
(8.) are: Pastoral Poetry (R. 36, 37; cf. T. 143; Guardian, 
passim); Death of Friends (R. 54, Idler (I). 90; cf. T. 114, 
181; 8. 349) ; Virtuosos (R. 82, 83; cf. T. 216, 221) ; Prostitu- 
tion (R. 107, 170, 171 ; cf. 8. 190) ; Degeneracy of the Stage 
(R. 133; cf. T. 108; 8. 446, 592) ; Beauty destroyed by Small- 
pox (R. 133; cf. 8. 306) ; Epistolary Prose (R. 152; cf. Epis- 
tolary Verse, S. 618) ; Bashfulness (R. 157, 159; cf. 8. 148) 
Test of Purity by Abraham's Magnet {R. 199; cf. 8. 579) 
J ~ -•- a " 8tage-0oarh (Adventurer (A.) 84; cf. T. 192 



INTRODUCTION xix 

Johnson also employs many of the well-tried expedients 
of his predecessors, such as Oriental tales, allegory, 
dreams, letters, and frequent quotation from Seneca and 
' Tully/ authors for whom he seems not otherwise to 
have had any especial liking; his citations from modern 
authors are much more extensive and varied than in 
the earlier periodicals. This rough sketch of Johnson's 
indebtedness to his forerunners will serve to show the 
general extent of his borrowings. It appears that The 
E ambler owes more to The Spectator, and The Idler 
to The Tatler, both in matter and manner; and that 
Steele's help was quite as important to Johnson as 
Addison's. 

But Johnson's best papers are on subjects spon- 
taneously chosen. Xow and then he cites a remark 
from Addison, but Addison's influence upon him in this 
respect is no greater than that of Dryden, Bacon, 
Seneca, or many others whom he cites in the same casual 
manner. 

The essays printed in this volume will illustrate the 
narrow range of Johnson's' topics. For this and for 
his prevailing seriousness he was constantly censured, 
and he acknowledged the truth of both criticisms with 



#. 242) ; Itch of Writing (A. 115; cf. S. 582) ; Singularity U. 
131; &. 576) ; Amazons {I. 5; cf 8. 433, 434) ; Newspapers (I. 
7 ; cf. T. 18, 19, 42, 178 ; 8. 452) ; Experiences of Servants 
(J. 26. 29; cf. 8. 96, 137) ; Advertisements (I. 40; cf. T. 224, 
228, 245) ; Terrific Diction (/. 36, 70: cf. T. 230, 244) ; Dick 
Minim (I. 60, 61 ; cf. Sir Timothy Tittle, T. 165) ; Indian's 
Opinion of the English (I. 81 ; cf. 8. 50) ; Oratory (J. 9 ; cf. 
T. 66, 70, 72 ; S. 407, 633) ; see also Notes in this edition on 
the Essays. Other subjects are common to two essayists, the 
choice of which is more likely to have been determined by John- 
son's natural preoccupation with them, than from the mere 
suggestion of his predecessors. The following may be noted : 
Education, especially the Education of Women ; Good Nature 
and Good Humor ; Value of Time and Dangers of Idleness ; 
Affectation ; Marriage ; Domestic Conditions ; Poverty ; Fame ; 
Friendship ; Vanity of Human Wishes ; Retirement from Ac- 
tive Life ; Irksomeness of Country Life ; Political Newsmongery ; 
English Language. 



xx INTRODUCTION 

his usual indifference; at the same time he realized 
that, to be anything at all, he must be himself and not 
affect the style or practice of another. In The Rambler 
his essays are longer than Addison's, and often slower 
in getting under way; not infrequently his first para- 
graph is superfluous. On the other hand he maintains 
stricter unity than his predecessors, who sometimes 
throw together in one essay letters and remarks on 
several unrelated subjects. Such informality was af- 
fected by Johnson but three or four times, and then 
under protest. 1 The geniality and gaiety which have 
made Addison so popular are not characteristic of 
Johnson; even in the shorter and livelier papers of 
The Idler there is greater weight and moral significance 
than is common in Addison. 

The best, as well as the greatest number, of Johnson's 
essays are generally confined to three subjects : char- 
acters and pictures of his time; literature; and the 
philosophy of life. Of these the first prevailingly deal 
with men and women of the middle class, wise and fool- 
ish. Merchants, housekeepers, servants, prisoners for 
debt, fops and flirts and matrons of a rich bourgeois 
society, country folk, squires, wits, critics, students, 
booksellers, shopkeepers, prostitutes — all these and more 
he selects from the middle and lower range of life in 
London, which he had studied long and well. His 
interest in this class, often remarked by Boswell, was 
not the condescending observation or curiosity of a man 
of the world, but came from his heart. In the well- 
appointed households of the Burneys or the Thrales, 
Johnson is a familiar figure; more familiar still is he 
as the centre of a circle including most of the greatest 
English men of genius in his day. He is more than 
once seen accepting the tribute of attention amid an 
adoring little group of Blue Stockings, or in quiet 
dignity at the exalted dinner-table of Lady Craven. 
1 Rammer 107, 126, 155, 156. 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

In such surroundings it is easy to overlook his deep 
longing for near and domestic companionship of an- 
other and humbler sort. Not only did he tolerate in 
his household a lot of feeble, wrangling old women, 
and a blundering half -quack, but he could not easily 
have dispensed with them; he loved them for their very 
infirmities. To them he returned gladly from London 
high life, and with them found peculiar comfort and 
consolation. 1 

From such affections and associations as these came 
Johnson's studies of life and character in his essays. 
Unlike The Spectator, he seldom aimed to correct merely 
the superficial and rather harmless follies of his time; 
there is no flutter of fans and rustle of petticoats in 
his little scenes, no glamor or artificial illumination. 
Johnson saw everything in the merciless light of common 
day, yet with imagination; and, seeing thus soberly, he 
could but repeat his protest against all sham and 
pretense, and utter his pity for human triviality and 
disillusionment. Mainly by this trait of his genius he 
has drawn to himself his many pupils in the art of 
living. 

If the essays seem monotonous in subject, the reason 
lies in their strongly autobiographical character. They 
came out of his own life, and, however abstract their 
style may become at times, they are capable of abundant 

1 To this same group belonged his pompous and devoted little 
landlord, Allen, the printer. For nearly thirty years their 
friendship grew and deepened ; how it was nourished from 
Allen's side we can only wonder : but when he died. Johnson 
grieved many clays for one of his best and tenderest friends 
[Life 4. 354). In the last years of Johnson's life, it was his 
custom, especially on his birthday, to give dinners at home for 
these lowly associates. He writes to his black protege, Barber : 
* As Thursday is my birthday, I would have a dinner got, and 
would have you invite Mrs. Desmoulins. Mrs. Davis, that was 
about Mrs. Williams, and Mr. Allen, and Mrs. Gardiner.' Mrs. 
Davis, says Miss Burney, was ' a good sort of woman,' ■ a 
charitable soul,' and Mrs. Gardiner was ' a tallow-chandler on 
Snow-hill ' (Life 3. 22), 'not in the learned way, but a worthy 
good woman ' (Life 1. 242) . 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

illustration from Boswell that will fill them with interest 
and significance. The discipline that qualifies for liter- 
ary success; the struggle to free oneself from servility 
to rich patrons, or from slavish thirst for popularity; 
a manly and independent front to the enemy in the 
fight of life; courage, especially in defeat, disappoint- 
ment, infirmity, or bereavement; the futility of despair; 
the consolation of friends, or conversation, or books, 
or work, or resources within oneself; the transcendent 
consolation of faith — these • are Johnson's themes, 
whether he speaks in the person of critic, moralist, 
humorist, story-teller, or impersonator. 1 

His greatest dignity, eloquence, and wit Johnson at- 
tains in his more abstract essays on the philosophy of 
life. At first they seem dry and hard to follow or 
remember — the talk of a dull old man. But they should 
not be taken in too rapid succession; they should be 
read aloud, evenly and with feeling, for the sake of 
their broad undulation and cadence. Only thus can 
their music and their emotional power be appreciated. 
No one has fairly tested them unless he has read them 
as they were first written to be read — one at a time — 
and at intervals. Rasselas and The Rambler should 
lie on the library table, or drop easily into the pocket. 
In an odd moment, during a lull in the ordinary pre- 
occupation of life, open the book by chance, and begin 
reading as the eye lights upon the page. Johnson's 
words, thus caught in passing, are nearly always instinct 
with freshness and sagacious sense. 2 

1 In these and all considerations of Johnson's essays Rasselas 
should not he forgotten, as it is really a series of moral 
essays strung on a rather slender thread of narrative. 

2 So Ruskin thought. In his charming autobiography (chap. 
12) he tells how ' on our foreign journeys, it being of course 
desirable to keep the luggage as light as possible, my father 
had judged that four little volumes of Johnson — The Idler and 
The Rambler — did, under names wholly appropriate to the 
circumstances, contain more substantial literary nourishment 
than could be, from any other author, packed into so portable 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 



Johnson lived in an age of biography and portraiture 
which culminated in the great Life of which he was 
the subject, and which he directly inspired, and in part 
created. For, besides being its subject, he seems to 
have known BoswelFs intention of writing his life, to 
have furnished him abundant material on request, and 
to have read over many of his notes. Furthermore, he 
was a frequent prompter of BoswelFs genius, in their 
discussions of the art and aim of biographical writing, 
and through his written opinions on that subject. If 
Johnson had a ruling literary passion, it was a passion 
for biography. The biographical part of literature, he 
says, i is what I love most/ x His reason almost goes 
without saying. i I esteem biography as giving us 
what comes near to ourselves, what we can turn to 
use.' 2 Only one biography of the first order can be 
written by one man. The execution requires such de- 
votion, affection, self-sacrifice, and contemplation of the 
subject, that it could not be otherwise. Johnson had 
too independent and dominant a nature to make the 
necessary surrender. Yet he believed that his literary 
strength lay especially in biographical writing. As 
achievements in literature his Lives of the Poets may 
not be compared with such great single portraits as 

compass. And accordingly, in spare hours, on wet days, the 
turns and returns of the reiterated Rambler and iterated Idler 
fastened themselves in my ears and mind.' ' I hold it more 
than happy that, during those continental journeys in which 
the vivid excitement of the greater part of the day left me 
glad to give spare half-hours to the study of a thoughtful 
book, Johnson was the one author accessible to me. No other 
writer could have secured me as he did, against all chance of 
being misled by my own sanguine and metaphysical tempera- 
ment. He taught me carefully to measure life, and distrust 
fortune, and he secured me, by his adamantine common sense, 
for ever, from being caught in the cobwebs of German meta- 
physics, or sloughed in the English drainage of them.' 
1 Life 1. 425. 2 Life 5. 79. 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

BoswelPs or Lockhart's. No doubt they are as en- 
thusiastic; but BoswelPs enthusiasm was an enthusiasm 
for Johnson, and Lockhart's an enthusiasm for Scott, 
whereas Johnson's is rather an enthusiasm for biography 
in general. While he wrote no one great biography, 
yet his biographical writings are informed Avith true 
greatness. He valued biography chiefly as a commen- 
tary on life; the autobiographical element in his Lives 
is large, and the shadow of his own struggle as a man of 
letters falls heavily across them. They vary greatly in 
length and formality; some are mere jottings of scant 
information; others, such as the Life of Addison, exhibit 
larger proportions and higher finish. 

Johnson's intellectual habit throughout his life was 
critical and judicial, rather than creative or pictorial. 
He transcends his biographical subject more than he 
enters into it; and the real greatness in his biographies 
is his own, not that of the man whose life he is writing. 
As repositories of facts gleaned and saved from oral 
tradition, their value is high, but aside from this they 
will ever be read for Johnson's sturdy vigor felt in 
every word, and for the expert precision with which 
the author appraises and demonstrates the significance 
of each detail or anecdote. 

VI 

The formal writings of Johnson, whatever their dig- 
nity and excellence, lack the peculiar charm of his con- 
versation; not so his letters and meditations. A cen- 
tury which excelled in biography naturally excelled in 
letter-writing. The letters of Swift, Pope, Gray, Cow- 
per, and above all, Walpole, have become classics of 
epistolary art. Few would think of Johnson in this 
connection. To be sure, his letters are not, in the same 
sense as the others, ' literary'; they are written un- 
consciously, spontaneously, with little or no thought of 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

publication; his correspondent is not the public. But 
herein lies their very excellence. Walpole may be read 
for his wit, his delicacy, his studied informality, his 
sophisticated and supercilious glance at a passing world. 
He writes the letter; Johnson writes letters, and writes 
them artlessly. Or if ever he employs art, iiis art 
is governed by his thought of the particular man or 
woman whom he addresses at the time, and as we read 
them Ave still feel like intruders for whose ears they 
were never intended. 

The two determinants in Johnson's letters were his 
feeling for his correspondent, and his sense of the occa- 
sion for his writing. They, therefore, follow no fixed 
model or style, but vary widely through the entire 
range of his nature and activities. They are trifling, 
tender, newsy, gratulatory, or beseeching, as the case 
may be. They comfort the wretched, and raise up the 
fallen. Each letter is perfectly adapted to the recipient, 
whether the writer drops into small talk with Mrs. 
Thrale, or pets her wee daughter; whether he teaches 
the dignity of merit to the haughty Lord Chesterfield, 
or gently brings to his right mind the whimpering Bos- 
well; whether, single-handed, he defies a combination 
of powerful booksellers, or pours out his soul to his 
dying mother. 

In the solitary agony of his prayers and meditations 
we may contemplate him only in humble silence. 

VII 

Of the critical essays appended to most of the Lives 
of the Poets Boswell remarks that they contain such 
standards of criticism as, i if digested and arranged in 
one system by some modern Aristotle or Longinus, might 
form a code on that subject such as no other nation 
can show/ BoswelFs forte was not literary criticism; 
no man need imagine himself a modern Aristotle or 
Longinus before daring to undertake a synthesis of John- 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

son's standards of judgment in literature. It is a 
common but unfair opinion that he had no standards 
of criticism, only prejudices, or at most certain narrow 
and hidebound opinions. He is usually considered the 
vociferous spokesman of conservative Eighteenth Cen- 
tury preferences in literature; but a review of his scat- 
tered utterances on the subject shows that his standards 
were consistent, and generally reasonable, if not all- 
inclusive. 

Special aversions in literature he had, as any man 
of acute perception and mental vigor must have. One 
of these was literary imitations — imitations of Pindar, 
of classical mythology, or mythology and folk-lore of 
any sort, imitations of pastorals, of the ballads, of Spen- 
ser or Milton. All these imitations as he saw them 
were imitations of externalities, not a perpetuation or 
revival of the deeper qualities of the originals. To him 
therefore they were affected and insincere. Of the 
real Homer, or the real Pindar, or Theocritus, or Spenser, 
or Milton, he thought as a sane man thinks. But af- 
fectation, whether in a small or a great poet, he would 
not tolerate. Affectation and true feeling do not go 
together, and the presence of the one argues a pro- 
portionate absence of the other. On these grounds he 
rejects the conceits of the ' metaphysical ' school, and 
this is the basis of his much deplored condemnation 
of Lycidas. Johnson suspects Milton of caring more 
for the pastoral style of verse than for the death of 
Edward King. 

Johnson is sometimes described as an absolute mon- 
arch in literature, whose edicts were authorized by the 
sacred constitution of Horace's Art of Poetry and Pope's 
Essay on Criticism. Yet his Essays and Lives reiterate 
again and again his suspicion of the petty preserip- 
tionist who measures every work by a neat outfit of 
rules, but whose mind is too small to comprehend in 
any degree the nature of genius. 



INTBODUCTION xxvii 

He approached his task of criticism with certain prin- 
ciples, most of them the well-tried standards of Aris- 
totle and Horace. These, however, he held subject to 
revision or suspension. ' There is always an appeal 
open from criticism to nature/ he says ; * and again : 
1 There always lies an appeal from domestic criticism 
to higher judicature; and the public which is never 
corrupted, nor often deceived, is to pass the last sentence 
upon literary claims.' 2 This confidence in the composite 
judgment of men never declined nor failed him. Mere 
fashion he condemned, as he deprecated the blind wor- 
ship of Shakespeare and the popular rage for the odes 
of Gray. With his unerring accuracy in such matters 
he detects in both a lack of sincerity. On the other 
hand, that which had really touched the hearts of many 
is sure of his regard and reverence, whether it is to 
his liking or not. Of the famous Elegy he says : ' I 
rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the 
common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary 
prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the 
dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim 
to poetical honors.' 3 

Sincerity and catholicity of appeal, then, were two 
of Johnson's standards in criticism. A third was clear- 
ness and accuracy of thought. He would not tolerate 
ideas that were fuddled or lost in mere riot of fantasy; 
and for this he arraigns and condemns the odes of 
Gray. . In no other respect is Johnson's method of 
criticism so wholesome to the modern reader. We are 
generally satisfied to get from poetry only an emotional 
reaction, good or bad, and to judge poetry according 
to the force of this reaction, without further inquiry. 
Johnson is fully aware of the importance of emotional 
power, but never excuses poetry from the necessity of 
intellectual strength, and his expert analysis of a single 

1 Preface to Shakespeare. 2 Rambler 23. 

3 Life of Gray, last paragraph. 



xxviii INTRODUCTION 

poem in search of its flaws in thought suggests to the 
modern study of poetry the discipline of which it is 
most in need. 

For a critic who preferred Fleet Street to Greenwich 
Park, and breasted 'the full tide of human existence 
at Charing Cross/ the one supreme function of poetry 
was naturally to reveal human life in all its phases, 
joyous or tragic. 1 To accomplish this effectually, poetry 
assumes a pleasing and winsome form by careful selec- 
tion of those things which it shall portray ("* images/ 
as Johnson calls them), and by the energy and charm 
of its language and measure. Genius is measured by 
originality, that is, the power of discovering something 
new, or at least, some new way in which to reveal the 
old. Learning is a necessary part of a poet's equip- 
ment, but wide intercourse with human life is more 
urgently necessary, and beyond this that peculiar energy 
and freshness of expression which marks what we call 
genius. 

There is little or no mysticism in Johnson's idea of 
poetic inspiration — no talk of Platonic ideas or divine en- 
thusiasm, of visitations from above, of coals from off 
the altar. In his religion Johnson was deeply mystical; 
and he would not admit, that religion was a subject 
proper to poetry. For the stories of sacred history ' the 
nakedness and simplicity ' of the Biblical narrative suf- 
fice ; i all addition/ he says, c to that which is already suf- 
ficient for the purposes of religion seems not only use- 
less, but, in some degree, profane.' 2 As for religious 
lyrics, ' Contemplative piety . . . cannot be poetical. 
Man, admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and 
plead the merits of his Redeemer, is already in a higher 
state than poetry can confer.' 3 

Of his own personal predilections in poetry no one 

1 His fullest statement of this principle is found in Rasselas, 
chapter 10. 

2 Lives 1, 291, 2. dlbid., 1. 49. 



INTRODUCTION xxix 

was more conscious than himself. ' It would be ludicrous 
to boast of impartiality/ he says in one place/ and in 
another suspects himself of i some partial fondness for 
the memory of Dryclen.' 2 But he distinguished between 
partial fondness and impartial judgment. He had, in- 
deed, a partial fondness for the cadence and regular 
period of the rimed couplet, and -preferred it to the 
unbroken surge of blank verse. From this it is too 
hastily inferred that he condemned blank verse, whereas 
in reality he considered rimed couplet the lower form 
of the two. The couplet has more grace, smoothness, 
and finish; thought conveyed in parcels so neat and 
small is easily grasped and retained. Since rime is 
more pleasing, it should be employed to adorn and recom- 
mend a slight and otherwise tediously sententious sub- 
ject. But for sublime and highly impassioned discourse 
blank verse is the right dress. Sublime and impassioned 
conceptions should be clothed in blank verse, which, 
however, hangs and trails ludicrously when it cloaks 
the little conceptions of a little poet. i He that thinks 
himself capable of astonishing may write blank verse; 
but those that hope only to please must condescend to 
rime.' 3 He, therefore, condemns the use of blank verse 
in Phillips' Cider, and says : ' Contending angels may 
shake the regions of heaven in blank verse; but the 
flow of equal measures and the embellishment of rime 
must recommend to our attention the art of grafting.' 4 
In Young's Night Thoughts 'the wild diffusion of the 
sentiments and the digressive sallies of the imagination 
would have been compressed and restrained by con- 
finement to rime.' 5 The course of Thomson's Seasons 
would have been ' obstructed and embarrassed by the 
frequent intersection of the sense, which are the nec- 
essary effects of rime.' 6 Johnson's conception of blank 

1 Preface to Shakespeare. 2 Lives 3. 273 (Pope). 

3 Lives 1. 194 (Milton). 4 Lives 1. 319 (J. Phillips). 

5 Lives 3, 395 (Young). 6 Lives 3. 299 (Thomson). 



xxx INTRODUCTION 

verse was much influenced by listening almost daily to 
the cadence of Vergil, Horace, and Juvenal, in a lan- 
guage both highly inflected and admitting the greatest 
variety of word-order. The contrast of English with 
Latin in this respect may have determined his opinion 
that English is not flexible enough to admit in blank 
verse the proper variety of cadence and distinctness of 
measure. 1 But jealous as he was of the integrity of 
the English vocabulary and idiom, possibly he has here 
failed to perceive what has historically proved to be 
the very spirit of English metre — free and wide varia- 
tion from the metrical norm, and the refusal to submit 
too monotonously to a strict metrical scheme. After 
all, the strictness of the rimed couplet, splendid as it 
was in a master's hand, is un-English, and not likely 
ever again to assert unlawful domination in English 
poetry. 

VIII 

In the study of style' there is always the danger of 
exaggerating its importance. Manner is never so sig- 
nificant as matter; technique should always rank below 
content; and excessive preoccupation with the study or 
cultivation of style is an infallible sign of its deteriora- 
tion. The style of Johnson is certain to be misunder- 
stood, if it is considered apart from the ideals and nature 
of the man himself, of whom it is a distinct shadow. 
When Maeaulay cursed it with the name ' Johnsonese/ 
he was thinking of a caricature of Johnson's style that 
was common enough among his imitators, and some- 
times the aberration of Johnson himself. This affected 
and spurious elegance bore merely the external and easily 
imitable traits of Johnson's manner, but even in the 
hands of Gibbon and Miss Burney it is only the cold, un- 

Lives 1. 192 {Milton) ; 3. 231 (Pope). 



INTRODUCTION xxxi 

crumbled cinder of the original. With his usual scorn 
for imitation Johnson said : * The imitators of my style 
have not hit it.' 1 

Externally considered, Johnson's manner of expres- 
sion is stiff, chiefly owing to his habits of sentence- 
structure. A list of these peculiarities will suffice. 2 
His sentences are nearly always declarative, and the 
normal order of statement is seldom altered. Entire 
sentences from capital to period are not as a rule peri- 
odic; but his sentences are often compound, and the 
single member or clause is generally cast into periodic 
form. The subordinate clauses are also unvaried and 
narrow in range, and are kept strictly subordinate in 
sense, as well as in structure; his commonest subordinate 
form is the relative clause restrictive. Subordination 
within subordination he avoids. Parenthetical and im- 
promptu phrases or particles, and even the auxiliary do, 
never rise to interrupt or block the momentum of his 
discourse. His most obvious habit is that of balance; 
his sentences, clauses, and even phrases, occur con- 
stantly in twos and fours, and such even apportionment 
of parts appears in almost every line; when he enum- 
erates examples or actions, however, they usually appear 
in threes. From this it will be seen that his style is 
well-knit and highly articulate. On the whole the noun 
predominates over the other parts of speech in his writ- 
ing; the adjective is not frequent enough to enfeeble 
it, nor the verb unduly to mobilize it. This prevalence 
of the noun greatly adds to the mass and weight of his 
style — a style which has its nearest analogy in the mas- 
sive architecture which he admired. 

The balanced symmetry of Johnson's constructions, 
though sometimes overdone and inappropriate, is best 
understood when considered in terms of architecture. 

^Life 3. 172. 

2 Illustrations of these structural traits may be found on any 
page of bis serious writings. 



xxxii INTRODUCTION 

It is like an arch, best calculated to bear the weight 
of meaning and the strain of passion. When the mean- 
ing is slight, and emotion is absent, the balance becomes 
absurdly disproportioned ; but where his words cany 
meaning and emotion enough to crush into confused 
ruin the syntax of an ordinary man, his balance upholds 
the weight, and gives it both calculated force and 
direction. 

In these latter days of literary informality Johnson's 
preference for words of Latin origin is not much liked. 
It has been often assumed that he made easy things 
hard in his fondness for polysyllabic grandeur, but the 
test of actual and intelligent reading will show how 
sincere was his hatred of ' that offense which is always 
given by unusual words.' * If the reader sometimes comes 
upon things l equiponderant ' or ' colorific/ or hears of 
4 the tortuosities of imaginary rectitude/ yet he has no 
doubt at all of Johnson's meaning. Like many great 
literary men he was a conservative in language, and 
strongly averse to coinage or importation ; he chooses no 
words which are not in good English standing. In his 
hands Latinized English becomes more than mere dead, 
unwieldy bulk. A writer with feebler heart and mind 
could not bring it to life, but Johnson's mental energy 
once applied makes his sonorous polysyllables fairly 
vibrate with energy and strike at his meaning with un- 
erring precision. 

IMs Latin element lent weight, sonority, and cadence 
to Johnson's style, but his chief reason for employing 
it seems to have lain deeper than this. It is necessary 
to observe that it is not constant. In the lighter essays, 
and in narrative and merely descriptive parts of the 
Lives of the Poets, it subsides; but in the moralistic 
or sententious writings it strongly predominates. 2 When 

1 Rambler j No. 86. 

2 Perhaps the raciest English he ever wrote is found in his 
tract, The False Alarm. 



INTRODUCTION xxxiii 

Johnson refused to write Goldsmith's epitaph in English, 
he had reasons; a learned man's epitaph, he insisted, 
i should be in ancient and permanent language ' to in- 
sure ' classical stability/ Everything intended to be 
universal and permanent should be in Latin. His best 
written utterance was moralistic; it expressed deductions 
which he had drawn from hard, varied, and well-endured 
experience, and had found confirmed by the learning 
of the ages. These, therefore, had claim to universality 
and permanence, and should receive such induration as 
English Latinity could give them. 

But his appreciation of Latin did not unfit Johnson 
to realize the power of the native element in the lan- 
guage, and, if he uses it sparingly, he nevertheless uses 
it with well-calculated effect. His undulating periods 
are sometimes interrupted by a blunt English aphorism; 
and, in his longer sentences, the native monosyllables, 
penetrating the mass of his eloquence, serve to quicken 
and inspirit it. The following passage is a fair example 
of his practice: 

1 The first j^ears of man must make provision for the 
last. He that never thinks never can be wise. Per- 
petual levity must end in ignorance; and intemperance, 
though it may fire the spirits for an hour, will make 
Life short or miserable. Let us consider that youth is 
of no long duration, and that in maturer age, when 
the enchantments of fancy shall cease, and phantoms 
of delight dance no more about us, we shall have no 
comforts but the esteem of wise men, and the means 
of doing good. Let us, therefore, stop, while to stop 
is in our power; let us live as men who are sometime 
to grow old, and to whom it will be the most dreadful 
of all evils to count their past years by follies, and 
to be reminded of their former luxuriance of health 
only by the maladies which riot has produced/ * 

Johnson's style at its best is not flexible; it is not 

Or heave i r>^- r 7_. i -^ .. \ 7 



xxxiv INTRODUCTION 

easily adapted to various occasions. As Carlyle says, 
it is a 'good buckram style/ stout and durable, not 
flowing in natural and easy folds about any form 
that it may invest. The talk of his ladies — Tranquilla, 
Nekaya, Misella, Zosima — is like their names. They are 
Johnsons ill-disguised in petticoats. Sometimes, how- 
ever, he throws off his formality, and impersonates with 
great verve and spirit a light character, or indulges hi 
a learned jeu d'esprit. But diverting as these may be, 
he never seems to have regarded them as a significant 
part of his literary achievement. 

As for the deeper, inimitable, and therefore really 
great qualities of Johnson's style, three predominate. 
The first is its strength. To touch the merest sentence 
of Johnson's in passing is like brushing a strong man 
in a crowd. It is never flabby or inert, but stout, heavy, 
and unyielding. It finds its way to the listener's mind 
by displacement, not by insinuation. 

Secondly, Johnson's style is spontaneous. He had 
taken much pains before it became so. He told Sir 
Joshua that i he had early laid it down as a fixed rule 
to do his best on every occasion, and in every com- 
pany; to impart whatever he knew in the most forcible 
language he could put it in; and that by constant prac- 
tice, and never suffering any careless expressions to 
escape him, or attempting to deliver his thoughts with- 
out arranging them in the clearest manner, it became 
habitual to him.' * His writings went wet to the press 
without blot or revision. The only exception to this is 
the essays, which, before being reprinted in permanent 
form, underwent a process of excision and condensation 
which left them in a state more characteristic of John- 
son's style than that of the first draft. It is not surpris- 
ing that we come upon an occasional infelicity, that we 
hear of t forces resistless as the blasts of pestilence,' or 
of beings ' chained down by pain/ of i the common 
i'Life 1. ?04 



IXTRODUCTIOX xxxv 

commerce of civility/ or of one who ' exalts bis faults.' 
But far better these than a sacrifice of his directness and 
spontaneity. 

He shuns affectation, and displays no gratuitous orna- 
ment or purple patches. Such is his independence that 
he rarely is reminiscent in phrase of even the Bible, 
or Shakespeare, or Milton. To others he reiterated the 
advice of Horace and Pope to retouch and slowly elabo- 
rate their work. The instinct of his own art gave him 
other counsel, forced upon him the hard work of elabora- 
tion at the beginning of his career, and then freed his 
spirit from the trammels of conscious and embarrassed 
self-adjustment to speak what he felt. 

The strength and spontaneity of Johnson's writing 
rise from a deeper source — its passion. Out of his 
struggles, his defeats, his sorrows, his contrition, his 
hatred of sophistry and sham, his tender concern for 
all human misery — out of these came the emotion 
that permeates his style and raises it to its greatest 
height. 

To appreciate this, as all other traits of his style, 
one must hear his language; it demands oral interpreta- 
tion, because, like all good style, it was orally conceived, 
and, except through the ear, its power and beauty can- 
not be revealed. As an example take the following pas- 
sage from the Falkland's Islands : 

' The life of a modern soldier is ill represented by 
heroic fiction. War has means of destruction more for- 
midable than the cannon and the sword. Of the thou- 
sands and the ten thousands that perished in our late 
contests with France and Spain, a very small part ever 
felt the stroke of an enemy; the rest languished in 
tents and ships, amidst damps and putrefaction; pale, 
torpid, spiritless, and helpless; gasping and groaning, 
unpitied among men, made obdurate by long continuance 
of hopeless misery; and were at last whelmed in pits, 
or heaved into the ocean, without notice and without 



xxxvi IX TB ODUC IIOX 

remembrance. By incommodious encampments and un- 
wholesome stations, where courage is useless, and enter- 
prise impracticable, fleets are silently dispeopled, and 
armies sluggishly melted away.' 

The movement of this passage is even, but irresistible; 
its waves rise and sink naturally; its cadence is neither 
abrupt nor delayed, but deep as that of the ocean. It 
refreshes and stimulates the listener's mind with its 
vigor, but creates no nervous excitement. By its emo- 
tional power it may both stir" and regulate the feelings 
of him who reads into full and true response to its 
own. 

IX 

It is a favorite principle with Johnson that literary 
genius must provide itself with twofold equipment — 
a knowledge of men, and a knowledge of books. Neither 
shall greatly avail without the other. A right under- 
standing of life cannot be got by observing the present 
world, without reading of the past; nor by reading 
the past without observing the present. Knowledge of 
each must correct, confirm, enforce, and vitalize know- 
ledge of the other. Not only the man of genius, but the 
scholar as well, must command this twofold knowledge, 
since scholarship in its humbler way has the same func- 
tion as genius — to interpret the significance of life itself. 

The extent and variety of Johnson's learning are 
astonishing. Adam Smith said * Johnson knew more 
books than any man alive.' x His memory seldom failed 
him. He used to say that he knew almost as much at 
eighteen as at fifty-four, 2 and no doubt the period of 
his greatest accumulations was past by the time he left 
Oxford. He probably knew best the Latin poets. Ju- 
venal he seems to have had almost entirely by heart, 
but he quotes the others freely, and with such appro- 
priateness and feeling as clear his citations of all 
1 Life 1. 71. *Life 1. 445. 



INTBODUCTION xxxvii 

pedantry. The enthusiasm of his Latin learning was 
very high; that of his Greek learning low in compari- 
son. In his time the idea of Greek culture was much 
distorted and darkened by the interposed glass of Latin- 
ism; and yet it is not likely that, had Johnson been 
allowed to see Hellenism face to face, it would have 
stirred him with such enthusiasm as it aroused in Winck- 
elmann or Shelley. But Johnson's Greek learning was 
in certain directions exceptional. Homer, Hesiod, and 
Euripides seem to have been best known to him. ' What 
he read solidly at Oxford was Greek/ says Boswell, 1 
and the younger Burney, a Hellenist of high repute, 
says that Johnson * could give a Greek word for almost 
every English one ! ' 2 

With all his scholarly accumulations, Johnson was not 
in our modern sense a specialist. To be sure, he com- 
piled almost unaided a dictionary which marks the great- 
est single advance ever made in English lexicography, 
but for etymologies and everything else connected with 
the history of the language he was dependent upon 
others. His peculiar contribution was the enlargement 
of the scope of such a work, and the employment in 
it of fine literary sense and experience. He edited 
Shakespeare,, but more by the aid of literary insight 
and exalted common sense, than by mere expert know- 
ledge of details. He wrote literary history with brilliant 
erudition, and this subject, if any, was his specialty, 
but not in the sense of having devoted his entire life 
to it and to nothing else. 

But Johnson did not despise minute specialization 
where it is governed by intelligent purpose. For ex- 
ample, the generally uninteresting and minute task of 
textual criticism demands in his opinion the highest 
abilities and training, and in his Preface to Shakespeare 
he nobly rebukes Pope for his ' contempt " of the dull 
duty of an editor." ? ' He understood but half his under- 
1 Life 1. 70. 2 Life 4. 385. 



xxxviii INTRODUCTION 

taking/ continues Johnson. ' The duty of the collator 
is indeed dull, yet, like other tedious tasks, is very 
necessary; but an emendatory critic would ill discharge 
his duty, without qualities very different from dullness. 
In perusing a corrupted piece he must have before him 
all possibilities of meaning, with all possibilities of ex- 
pression. Such must be his comprehension of thought, 
and such his copiousness of language. Out of the many 
readings possible, he must be able to select that which 
best suits with the state, opinions, and modes of lan- 
guage prevailing in every age, and with the author's 
particular caste of thought, and turn of expression. 
Such must be the knowledge, and such his taste. Con- 
jectural criticism demands more than humanity pos- 
sesses, and he that exercises it with most praise, has 
very frequent need of indulgence. Let us now be told 
no more of the dull duty of an editor.' Such words have 
not lost their significance in a day when men either 
scornfully abjure specialism, or stifle it with narrow 
conception and practice. 

Johnson's learning is but one gauge of his scholar- 
ship. The spirit in which he used it is more important. 
His essays were written chiefly ■ to inculcate wisdom 
and piety, 1 and his Lives of the Poets ' in, such a man- 
ner as may tend to the promotion of piety/ 2 not by 
mere platitude, but by discerning and showing true 
values in life. To this he devoted his stores accumu- 
lated from the observation and experience of other men 
in other times. Any half dozen of his moral essays 
will furnish a widely varied list of cited authors, which 
is the more impressive for Johnson's method of im- 
promptu composition. Yet he employs his learning not 
to astonish the reader, but to illuminate his meaning, 
His learning was indeed encyclopedic, but its wide 
circle was invariably true to its centre in Johnson's 
passionate desire to live sincerely, bravely, and rever- 
1 Rambler 208. 2 Life 4. 34. 



INTRODUCTION xxxix 

ently, and to teach others the art of living in like 
manner. 

The spirit of his scholarship is nowhere more clearly 
reflected than in a remark of Imlac : i To talk in public, 
to think in solitude, to read and to hear, to inquire and 
to answer inquiries, is the business of a scholar. He 
wanders about the world without pomp or terror, and 
is neither known nor valued but by men like himself.' x 
Johnson here shows both the courage and the quiet 
unemulous dignity that accompanies all true scholar- 
ship. But not in statement of his theory does it appear 
so illustrious as in his practice; witness the seven 
long years of solitary labor at the Dictionary, in 
which he continually overdrew upon his strength and 
learning. 

The vanity of scholarship was unknown to Johnson. 
He was never self-satisfied in his learning. He ever 
yearned for more, not with ambition or with l the scholar's 
melancholy which is emulation/ but with the true schol- 
arly passion of curiosity. He says : i Curiosity is, in 
great and generous minds, the first passion and the 
last; and perhaps always predominates in proportion 
to the strength of the contemplative faculties.' 2 It was 
curiosity that stimulated his imagination to outstrip his 
actual knowledge, and saved him at once from the pride 
and the foolishness of a pedant. It energized all his 
inquiries; it sent him on all his travels, whether among 
the stormy Hebrides, or, in imagination, to the court 
of Sweden or the wall of China. It sought interviews 
with traders, artisans, soldiers, philosophers, and peers; 
it drew him into public controversies; it set him dab- 
bling in physic and amateur chemistry to the imminent 
risk of life and limb. On arriving for dinner at Mr. 
Cambridge's, i he ran eagerly to one side of the room, 
intent on poring over the backs of the books.' - It 
seems odd,' said Mr. Cambridge, ' that one should have 
1 RasselciS; chapter 8. . 2 Ranibler, No. 150. 



xl INTRODUCTION 

such a desire to look at the backs of books.' ' Sir, the 
reason is very plain. Knowledge is of two kinds. We 
know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can 
find information upon it/ 1 Where he could not him- 
self explore a subject, he encouraged and inspired others 
to do so; imbued though he was with the spirit of 
Roman antiquity, he scorned not the old Teutonic and 
Celtic civilizations, but was all the more eager that 
their secrets should be explored and published. Thomas 
Astle, the English antiquarian, ' who lives/ says Wal- 
pole, Mike moths on old parchments/ was not despised 
by Johnson, who could always learn something from 
him of 'the antiquities of my country/ In one letter 
to Astle he writes : i Many things familiar to you are 
unknown to me, and most others. . . . Had the Saxons 
any gold coin ? I have much curiosity after the manners 
and transactions of the middle ages, but have wanted 
either diligence, or opportunity, or both. You, Sir, have 
great opportunities, and I wish you both diligence and 
success/ Nearly twenty-five years earlier he had writ- 
ten to the Irish antiquary, O'Connor : i I have long 
wished that the Irish literature were cultivated. Ireland 
is known by tradition to have been once the seat of 
piety and learning; and surely it w T ould be very accept- 
able to all those who are curious either in the original 
of nations, or the affinities of languages, to be further 
informed of the revolution of a people so ancient, and 
once so illustrious.' 2 He further expresses the fear 
that to neglect longer the study of Welsh and Irish an- 
tiquity may in another century mean the complete ex- 
tinction of such learning beyond all possibilities of re- 
vival. Twenty years later, in 1777, he writes again to 
O'Connor : ' I expected great discoveries in Irish an- 
tiquity, and large publications in the Irish language; 
but the world still remains as it was, doubtful and 
ignorant. What the Irish language is in itself, and to 
1 Life 2. 365. 2 Life 1. 322. 



INTRODUCTION xli 

what languages it has affinity, are very interesting ques- 
tions, which every man wishes to see resolved that has 
any philological or historical accuracy.' Especially is 
he interested in a history of Christian Ireland before 
English interference. \ Set about it, therefore, if you 
can: do what you can easily do without anxious exact- 
ness. Lay the foundation, and leave the superstructure 
to posterity.' * Fired as he was by passionate curiosity, 
Johnson both accomplished more, and inspired more, in 
the world of learning than ever he could have done by 
highly specialized activity. It was his task to stimulate 
the inquiry of others, and to support them in their 
labors by sympathetic interest, and by the manly nobility 
which he always maintained for scholarship as well as 
for literature. 



Very likely there never was a time when delight in 
the beauties of nature was so common and manifest 
as it is at present. Hence to many Johnson's alleged in- 
ability to appreciate such beauty appears to be his most 
glaring defect. On this point he should speak for him- 
self. 

In his brief Diary of a Journey in Wales he writes: 
' The way lay through pleasant lanes, and overlooked 
a region beautifully diversified with trees and grass.' 2 
In one of his letters he says : ' I hope to see standing 
corn in some part of the earth this summer, but I shall 
hardly smell hay or suck clover flowers.' 3 His love 
of vegetation and trees appears frequently in his writ- 
ings, and often furnishes him with a figure or illustra- 
tion. 

But the austere grandeur of the Hebrides struck a 

1 Life 3. 112. Johnson's gratification, could he have fore- 
seen the advance in Celtic studies, can easily be imagined. 

2 Life 5. 439. 3 Lett. 2. 163. 



xlii INTRODUCTION 

more responsive chord in his nature. Of a spot near 
Glenmorison he wrote to Mrs. Thrale : i I sat down to 
take notes on a green bank, with a small stream run- 
ning at my feet, in the midst of savage solitude, with 
mountains before me and on either hand, covered with 
heath.' * Again he writes of sailing by night along the 
coast of Mull : ' The wind rose, the sea swelled ; and 
Boswell desired to be set on dry ground; we, however, 
pursued our navigation, and passed by several little 
islands in the silent solemnity of faint moonshine, see- 
ing little, and hearing only the wind and water.' 2 Of 
a night journey near Inverary he says : i The night came 
on while we had yet a great part of the way to go, 
though not so dark but that we could discern the cata- 
racts which poured down the hills on one side, and fell 
into one general channel that ran with great violence 
on the other. The wind was loud, the rain was heavy, 
and the whistling of the blast, the fall of the shower, 
the rush of the cataracts, and the roar of the torrent, 
made a nobler chorus of the rough music of nature 
than it had ever been my chance to hear before/ 3 He 
speaks also of a scene on Lochness which, Boswell says, 
6 for a time engrossed all our attention. ' i The way/ 
says Johnson, ' was very pleasant ; the rock out of 
which the road was cut was covered with birch-trees, 
fern, and heath. The lake below was beating its bank 
by a gentle wind, and the rocks beyond the water on 
the right stood sometimes horrid and wild, and some- 
times opened into a kind of bay, in which there was 
a spot of cultivated ground yellow with corn. In one 
part of the way we had trees on both sides for per- 
haps half a mile. Such a length of shade perhaps 
Scotland cannot show in any other place.' 4 At Auchin- 
leck ' he was pleased/ says Boswell, i when I showed 

1 Lett. 1. 247,8. 2 Lett. 1. 282. 

3 Journey to the Western Islands } near end. 
*Lett. 1. 241, 242. 



INTEODUCTION xliii 

him some venerable old trees, under the shade of which 
my ancestors had walked. He exhorted me to plant 
assiduously.' The generally treeless condition of Scot- 
land was a subject of his constant raillery while he 
traveled there; a rage for planting arose soon after, 
which was ascribed by Sir Walter Scott to Johnson's 
sarcasms, and by reason of it he was nicknamed - Papa- 
dendrion.' 

But Johnson never grows ecstatic over the beauties 
of nature. His enjoyment of them was always sub- 
ordinate to a grander contemplation of human life, 
as in all the greatest poets, philosophers, and artists. 
If the beauties of nature are seldom described by him, 
or not subtly observed, nevertheless he is safe from 
the exaggeration of feeling toward them so common 
in later or less normal minds. He is not guilty of 
the shallow sentimentalism toward nature that was com- 
ing into vogue in his own time; nor of the despondency 
that goes naturally with excessive delight hi her sensuous 
beauties, nor of the vague and flimsy pantheism that 
results from incompetent endeavors to spiritualize her; 
nor of idle and transient impressionism, sufficient unto 
the moment, but incapable of consummation. A feeling 
for nature Johnson confessed, nor did he despise it in 
himself nor in others. But he would say, let it not exist 
for its own sake; let it not be cultivated as a mere 
fashion, and run the risk of insincerity; let it, like all 
other human interests, serve the prime interest of living 
wisely and bravely. 

Johnson readily confessed his inability to appreciate 
the arts. When, just before his death, he heard the 
music of a passing funeral, he acknowledged that it 
was the first time he had ever been affected by music. 
Boswell says he was fond of the bagpipe, and would 
stand for some time with his ear close to the great 
drone — certainly not strong proof of his discernment in 
the art. He regretfully admits that he cared as little 



xliv INTRODUCTION 

for painting. The difficulty of the performance was his 
chief criterion. Yet he really felt the superiority of 
Raphael on viewing his works in Paris. He was 
disgusted, as well he might be, with contemporary alle- 
gorical painting, and appreciated the sincerity and en- 
thusiasm of the portraits of his time. ' I should be 
grieved/ he says, * l to see Reynolds transfer to heroes 
and to goddesses, to empty splendor, and to airy fiction, 
that art which is now employed in diffusing friend- 
ship, in reviving tenderness, in quickening the affec- 
tions of the absent, and continuing the presence of the 
dead/ 

Boswell explains his friend's defects of appreciation 
by his defects of ear and eye. This perhaps accounts 
in part for his indifference to the stage. A reason more 
commonly, but less fairly, alleged is his jealousy of 
Garrick. But there is more philosophy in his criticisms 
than this implies. He had no patience with professional 
rant, of which even Garrick sometimes was guilty, and 
more than once he corrected defects of accent and em- 
phasis in the great actor's delivery. By testimony of 
his friends Johnson himself was doubtless the better 
declaimer. With regard to the art of acting he seems 
to have felt its inferiority as being an interpretative, not 
a creative art; it involved, he feared, a sacrifice of the 
real personality and character of the actor to the various 
personalities and characters which it was his business 
from time to time to represent, thus causing a dangerous 
instability in the actor himself. At any rate, variety 
and instability are the faults for which he criticizes his 
old pupil, while he generously admits that he would 
himself have fallen more deeply into them, had he met 
with Garrick's success. He appreciated the acting 
of comedy more than of tragedy. l Familiar comedy,' 
he wrote, l is often more powerful on the theatre than 
in the page; imperial tragedy is always less.' 2 Per- 
1 Idler 3 No. 45. 2 Preface to Shakespeare. 



INTRODUCTION xlv 

haps the explanation lies in his extraordinary sensitive- 
ness to the great tragic facts of life. Doubtless as 
he read the lines of Macbeth or Lear his imagination 
outstripped any histrionic attempt to convey the tragic 
meaning of these plays, and even Garrick's powerful 
reinforcement of their emotion, imperfectly perceived 
by him, was not equal to the force of his own 
realization. 

To the influence of architecture he was more suscepti- 
ble. He seemed indifferent to the debased styles of 
his time, and his expressed appreciation referred to 
examples of late Romanesque or early Gothic ecclesi- 
astical building. This is well shown in the journal of 
his tour in France. From St. Denis he writes : ' The 
church is not very large, but the middle aisle is very 
lofty and awful.' Again from Noyon: ' The cathedral, 
is very beautiful/ Of the twelfth-century church at 
Cambray, destroyed in the Revolution, he says : i It 
is very beautiful, with chapels on each side. The choir 
splendid. . . . The neff very high and grand/ He 
called York Minster ' an edifice of loftiness and elegance 
equal to the highest hopes of architecture/ thus dis- 
cerning with some accuracy the aims of the architects 
who planned this rather showy example of Gothic. He 
said of Durham : ' The cathedral has a massiveness and 
solidity such as I have seen in no other place: it rather 
awes than pleases, as it strikes with a kind of gigantic 
dignity, and aspires to no other praise than that of 
rocky solidity and indeterminate duration.' At Auchin- 
leck he admired i the sullen dignity of the old castle.' 
But very likely his feelings were as much stirred by 
the historic associations of these buildings, as by their 
architectural merit. l If I were to visit Italy,' he said, 
■ my curiosity would be more attracted by convents than 
by palaces.' x When, after long and toilsome journeying, 
he at last set foot on the island of Iona, he viewed its 

1 Life 1. 365. 



xlvi INTRODUCTION 

ruins with no little emotion. i That man is little to 
be envied/ he wrote afterwards, i whose patriotism would 
not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose 
piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.' 

XI 

On a fine spring day in Johnson's sixty-sixth year, 
he and Boswell set out in a carriage for Twickenham. 
6 Johnson was in such good spirits/ says Boswell, i that 
everything seemed to please him as we drove along.' 
The subject of good humor was broached, f Shaking 
his head ; and stretching himself at ease in the coach, 
and smiling with much complacency, he turned to me 
and said, " I look upon myself as a good-humored fel- 
low." ... I answered, also smiling, " No, no, Sir, that 
will not do. You are good-natured, but not good- 
humored; you are irascible. You have not patience 
with folly and absurdity." ' 1 In The Rambler 2 Johnson 
defines good-humor, as ' a habit of being pleased/ and 
after urgently recommending it for three pages, he 
comes slyly upon the following anti-climax : i Surely noth- 
ing can more evidently show the value of this quality, 
than that it recommends those who are destitute of all 
other excellencies, and procures regard to the trifling, 
friendship to the worthless, and affection to the dull.' 
Perpetual good humor, then, argues contemptible weak- 
ness of character, and is an impossible trait in an ideal- 
ist and a foe to compromise. Johnson's ill humor 
comes of his jealousy for his ideals, where it is not 
a matter of ill health, or of the vile melancholy ' which 
has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.' It 
is an evidence of strength in his character; or, if ever 
a sign of weakness, then a weakness against which he 
struggled. ' When I am musing alone/ he wrote to 
his friend Taylor, 6 I feel a pang for every moment 
1 Life 2. 362. 2 No. 72. 



I 



INTEODUCTIOX xlvii 

that any human being has by my peevishness or ob- 
stinacy spent in uneasiness ; ' * and twenty years later he 
said in Miss Burney's hearing : ' I am always sorry when 
I make bitter speeches, and I never do it but when 
I am insufferably vexed,' In such cases he was, by 
common testimony, the first to seek reconciliation with 
his victim. But asperity was the exception, not the 
rule, with him, and Boswell deplores ' the unjust opinion 
of the harshness of his general demeanor/ 

It is significant that his gentleness was more often 
remarked by women than by men. Johnson went into 
society more than one would infer from BoswelFs ac- 
count. On such occasions the ladies either overlooked 
or forgot his uncouthness. They seem never to have 
been repelled, for to the end of his life they continued 
to gather about him, and hang over him with an almost 
sentimental devotion. If the four women who knew 
Johnson best had been gifted with BoswelFs skill and 
industry, they could have produced as good a portrait 
as his, though in a wholly different light and attitude. 
Johnson was sought out by the gorgeous little group 
of the Blue Stockings. Lady Lavinia Spencer, 
whose portrait by Sir Joshua is one of his loveliest, 
recalled hearing her mother say now and then : l No- 
body dines with us to-day; therefore, child, we will 
go and get Dr. Johnson.' And they would drive off 
to Bolt Court to fetch him. 2 Wraxall, whose account 
of Johnson betrays the lingering tenderness of 
some old bruise, says nevertheless : ' I have seen the 
Duchess of Devonshire, then in the first bloom of youth, 
hanging on the sentences that fell from Johnson's lips, 
and contending for the nearest place to his chair.' 3 
Mrs. Johnson's devotion to her husband, and Mrs. 
Thrale's friendship hardly need be cited. 

1 Letters 1. 72. 

2 S. Rogers, Table Talk, p. 10, cited by Hill, Life 3. 425, 
n. 3. 

3 Historical and Posthumous Memoirs 1. 113, 114. 



xlviii INTRODUCTION 

The story of Miss Burney's affection and memory for 
him runs through her long memoirs of herself and of her 
father, from her first girlish enthusiasm to that dark 
day, many years after, when she, among the few that 
were left of his old friends, haunted the stairs of his 
lodging, and yearned to catch one more look or word 
from the dying man. Another of his admirers was 
the Quakeress Olivia Lloyd, for whom he conceived a 
boyish enthusiasm at sixteen; such too were Molly 
Aston, Mrs. Emmet, an actress at Lichfield, and Mrs. 
Careless, l the first woman with whom I was in love/ 
who at Birmingham many years later, ' took me under 
her care and told me when I had tea enough/ Nor 
should the Miss Cottrells be forgotten, at whose house, 
he first met Reynolds ; nor the clever Miss Carter, l who 
could make a pudding as well as translate Epictetus/ 
and who i ought to be celebrated in as many different 
languages as Lewis le Grand ' ; nor his harmless flirta- 
tion with Mrs. M'Kinnon in the Hebrides, and with the 
little lady in the Isle of Skye, who vainly tried to 
embarrass him by sitting on his knee. One of Bos- 
weir's triumphs is his picture of Johnson at Inverary, 
honored by the famous beauty, Miss Gunning, then Duch- 
ess of Argyle, while her daughter, Lady Betty Hamil- 
ton, ' after dinner, went and placed her chair close to 
his, and leaned upon the back of it, and listened eagerly. 
... I never saw him so gentle and complaisant as 
this day.' 1 His address to Mrs. Boswell was so cour- 
teous as to ? charm her into a f orgetfulness ' of his 
exterior. To be sure he drained the candles on her 
carpet, and she thought he had too much influence over 
her husband — jealousy which, Boswell says, is ' natural 
to a female mind.' 2 Her ill will grieved Johnson for 
three years, but his knightly patience with the lady 
triumphed at last, and she sent him her forgiveness 
in a jar of marmalade, so gallantly acknowledged in his 
1 Life 5. 358. 2 Life 2. 269, n. 



INTRODUCTION xlix 

famous letter to her. 1 His truer and higher chivalry 
appears in his affectionate ministrations to the medley 
of wretched men and women who found asylum in 
his household, and in return made it a den of discord. 
To Mrs. Thrale's remonstrance on such a state of volun- 
tary misery he would only reply that she knew not 
1 how to make allowances for situations which she had 
never experienced.' 2 



XII 

At a dinner given by Mr. Dilly in 1778, Johnson 
and his friends were talking quietly about benevolence, 
when Johnson remarked suddenly : ' I am willing to 
love all mankind but an American ' ; and i his inflamma- 
ble corruption/ says Boswell, ' bursting into horrid fire, 
he breathed out threatenings and slaughter, calling them 
" Rascals, Robbers, Pirates " ; and exclaiming that he 
would " burn and destroy them." Miss Seward, looking 
at him in mild but steady astonishment, said " Sir, this 
is an instance that we are always most violent 
against those whom we have injured." He was irritated 
still more by this delicate and keen reproach, and roared 
out with another tremendous volley, which one might 
fancy could be heard across the Atlantic.' 3 His irasci- 
bility on this occasion, though partly due to some un- 
toward circumstance of health or situation, shows that 
a sensitive spot had been touched, and that it lay very 
near certain of his deepest convictions. It is easy to 
call these convictions prejudice, where we do not agree 
with them. But Johnson's dislike of America was only 
a corollary of his convictions on larger subjects, in 
which he was invariably consistent. 

Johnson was deeply humanitarian. Even in the days 
of his extreme poverty quiet acts of charity were a 

1 See p. 379. 2 Misc. 1. 292. 3 Life 3. 290. 



1 INTRODUCTION 

commonplace in his life. He called for a reform of 
the very severe penal code. He protested against im- 
prisonment for debt. He did his utmost to save from 
the gallows a foolish clergyman condemned to death 
for forgery. The outcasts of London could always 
count upon his kindness, and the instance is well- 
known of his care for an abject and exhausted woman 
whom he raised from the kennel, and carried to his 
own shelter. His pity was deeper and more sincere 
than the fashionable ' benevolence ' of his time. It is 
natural, then, that he should hate slavery, and should 
be deeply shocked by the stories of oppression in the 
Y\est Indies. It is natural that he should hate war, 
especially wars of aggression and conquest. * How is it/ 
he cried ; ' how is it that we hear the loudest yelps 
for liberty among the drivers of negroes ? ' * and ' in 
company with some very grave men at Oxford, he gave 
as his toast, " Here's to the next insurrection of the 
negroes in the West Indies." ' 2 As early as 1740 he 
maintained ' the natural right of negroes to liberty and 
independence.' i An individual may, indeed, forfeit his 
liberty by a crime; but he cannot by that crime forfeit 
the liberty of his children.' 3 But not merely as holders 
of slaves had Americans forfeited a right to demand 
liberty. He suspected them but too justly of unfair 
treatment of the Indies. ' I do not much wish well 
to discoveries, for I am always afraid they will end 
in conquest and robbery.' 4 In the French and Indian 
war he said : ' Such is the contest that no honest man 
can heartily wish success to either party. ... It is 
only the quarrel of two robbers for the spoil of a 
passenger.' 5 In 1769 he said of the Americans : ' Sir, 
they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful 
for any thing we allow them short of hanging.' s And in 

1 Taxation no Tyranny, near end. z Life 3. 200. 

9 Life 3. 202. 4 Lett. 1. 210. 

5 State of Affairs in 1756. * Life 2. 312. 



INTEODUCTION H 

1775 he wrote : i On the original contrivers of the mis- 
chief [American insubordination] let an insulted na- 
tion pour out its vengeance.' 1 Johnson's attitude to- 
wards America, then, was in part humanitarian, and 
took its origin in reports of wars and colonial malad- 
ministration. 

But his position was not merely a matter of feeling; 
it was quite as much determined by principle. Po- 
litically he was an idealist and a Tory. His Toryism, 
if somewhat colored by sentiment, was chiefly his faith 
in his theory of society. 

Whiggism after 1760 appears different from the Whig- 
gism of the time of Queen Anne. Though Whig prin- 
ciples were unchanged, the bearing of Whiggism was 
altered. In the earlier days the party had included 
Addison and the oncoming Robert Walpole; it was then 
energetic, practical, unsentimental, sedate. In the later 
days it tended to sentimentalize, to theorize, to talk of 
liberty and oppression, of freedom and equality, and 
'my country/ The better Whigs were free from such 
extravagance, but the noisy and conspicuous Whigs be- 
came more numerous, until Whiggism became ill-defined 
and unsafe. A Whig might stand anywhere between 
a loyal supporter of the Constitution such as Burke, 
and a shallow doctrinaire who in one breath proclaimed 
himself a patriot, and clamored for the razing of the 
social fabric to one level. Such was the lady to 
whom Johnson showed i the absurdity of the leveling 
doctrine' by asking that her footman sit at the table 
with them. i She has never liked me since. Sir, your 
levelers wish to level down as far as themselves; but 
they cannot bear leveling up to themselves.' 2 The cant 
of Whiggism, like all cant, was sure to disgust Johnson. 
1 When a butcher tells you his heart bleeds for his coun- 
try, he has in fact no uneasy feeling.' 3 But he saw 
also that the tendency to level society is a tendency 

1 Taxation no Tyranny. 2 Life 1. 447. 3 Life 1. 394. 



lii INTRODUCTION 

away from a peculiar requisite of civilization which 
measures its distance from barbarism. i Were man- 
kind to be in this pretty state of equality, they would 
soon degenerate into brutes.' i Whiggism is a 
negation of all principle/ i The first Whig was the 
Devil/ The logical outcome for him of Whig notions 
urged to their utmost would be loss of standards of 
citizenship, loss of reverence, of obedience, of order, of 
that which holds society together. ' Whigs/ he writes, 
i are not willing to be governed. . . . Let our boldest 
oppugners of authority looked forward with delight to 
the futurity of Whiggism.' * The oppression so much 
feared by the Whigs Johnson considered imaginary — ■ 
the speculation of uneasy alarmists. Said Sir Adam 
Fergusson to him : i Sir, in the British constitution it 
is surely of importance to keep up a spirit in the 
people, so as to preserve a balance against the crown/ 
1 Sir/ answers Johnson in a fury, ' I perceive that you 
are a vile Whig. Why all this childish jealousy of 
the power of the crown? The crown has not power 
enough. When I say that all governments are alike, 
I consider that in no government power can be abused 
long. Mankind will not bear it. If a sovereign op- 
presses his people to a great degree, they will rise and 
cut off his head. There is a remedy in human nature 
against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every 
form of government/ 2 

In his famous tract on the American question, Taxa- 
tion no Tyranny, his reasoning rests upon just this 
basis — the necessity to highly civilized society of sub- 
ordination and elaborate gradation, and the sacrifice of 
civilization that must come at the reducing of such gra- 
dation to too low a level. Of course this is reasoning 
theoretically, idealistically, with a sublime disregard of 
the particular case in hand, and of the character of those 

1 Canceled conclusion of Taxation no Tyranny; see Life 1. 
314. 2 Life 2. 170. 



INTRODUCTION liii 

who really led the struggle for American independence. 
In direct contrast is Burke, who abjured theory, and in- 
sisted upon a practical reckoning with the actual con- 
dition, temper, and mood of the Americans at the time. 
To us Burke's method seems to make Johnson's ridicu- 
lous. But Johnson's opposition to Whiggism had its 
justification sooner than any one expected. If we think 
that Burke, the statesman immersed in affairs, was 
therefore more trustworthy than the philosopher John- 
son, let us recall Burke's sudden and horrified revulsion 
at the overturning of order and government in France, 
when with all his strength he threw himself against 
the current of Whiggism that swirled about him, and 
threatened to sweep English civilization into anarchy 
and confusion. It was Burke, if it was any one man, 
who saved England then, but to do so he was thrust 
into the position of his revered friend, whom death 
had spared the anxiety of that moment of danger. 
Burke was overtaken almost unprepared, whereas John- 
son's voice had been raised in reiterated warning against 
this gloomy consequence. 

Sentiment mingled with Johnson's Tory principles, 
but there is danger of taking this sentiment more seri- 
ously than did Johnson himself. Bos well's father, the 
Laird of Auchinleck, was only one of many who thought 
him a i Jacobite fellow/ but this suspicion of his Jacobit- 
ism seems merely to have amused Johnson. He 
always had a high regard for rank, and wiiat Burke 
calls the solemn plausibilities of the world, but it was 
a regard rather for the position as a necessary part 
of the English social structure, than for the person who 
occupied it. If bad material gets into that structure, 
it is no final proof that the design itself is bad. Take 
it out when opportunity comes of doing so without 
injuring the fabric, and put in better. Perhaps John- 
son sometimes imagined the English constitutional de- 
sign built up of better material than in reality it con.- 



liv INTRODUCTION 

tained. ' I have the old feudal notions/ he said. 1 He 
loved Oxford, and the medieval church, and old castles, 
and every suggestion of an ancient society with its 
rich inheritance of all that pertains to the art of living. 

With all his conservatism and conformity Johnson 
was a radical of radicals, and a democrat of democrats. 
He showed exquisite sense of propriety in an unexpected 
interview with the king, and by his conduct gave an 
unconscious illustration of Chesterfield's expert advice 
for such an occasion. 2 On the other hand he sacrificed 
neither dignity nor individuality when he talked with 
the thieves and prostitutes of London. He knocked 
down an impudent bookseller, and l beat many a fellow.' 
He l lived in the world, and took, in some degree, the 
color of the world as it moved along.' His remark to 
Sir Adam Fergusson, just quoted, shows his sympathy 
with a people's just resistance to real tyranny. l If the 
abuse be enormous,' said he, i Nature will rise up, and 
claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political 
system.' 3 

Johnson was . that peculiar servant of democratic so- 
ciety called a man of letters, panurgic and indefatigable. 
His final criterion of literary values was the judgment 
of the people. His works — whether Parliamentary De- 
bates, Dictionary, Essays, tracts or biography — had as 
their peculiar function the increase of popular intel- 
ligence in literature, politics, and morality. ' No man 
who ever lived by literature has lived more independently 
than I have done,' said he, referring to the period of 
his life before he received his pension; and the story 
of his championship for the independence of all literary 
men has its culmination in the famous letter to Chester- 

*Life 3. 177. 

2 * Were you to converse with a King, you ought to be as easy 
and unembarrassed as with your own valet de chambre: but yet 
every look, word, and action, should imply the utmost respect ' 
(Chesterfield, Letters to his Son 3. 203; cf. Life 2. 40). 

*Life 1. 424, 



INTRODUCTION Iv 

field. It signifies, for better or worse, the end of patron- 
age, and of the servile prostitution of literature to the 
corrupt taste of a spurious elite. 

A true aristocrat is sometimes defined as one who 
in his conversation can set people of any rank at ease, 
without sacrifice of his own nature or bearing. Is this 
not as good a definition of the true democrat? At 
any rate it is a satisfactory definition of a gentleman, 
and, beneath all his whims and temperamental disfigure- 
ments, such a gentleman was Johnson. 

XIII 

The subject which Johnson liked best at the University 
was metaphysics. Many years later, as he was walking 
with Bos well, they touched upon the subject of Berke- 
ley's idealism. Boswell remarked that it could not be 
refuted. i I refute it thus/ said Johnson, kicking a 
large stone so hard that he rebounded from it. 1 At 
another time he called Berkeleyanism a i reverie.' His 
mind was not naturally speculative. If he was at one 
time fascinated with metaphysics, it was through his 
habit of losing himself for hours in idle dreams and 
abstractions, from which he awoke to punish himself 
with merciless flagellations of conscience. Such pre- 
occupation he never took for real philosophic thought, 
and deplored the many days of his life which it had 
subtracted from the earnest business of living. 

His philosophical attitude was but a shadow of his 
attitude in religion. If he rejected Berkeley, it does 
not follow that he was a materialist, as is sometimes al- 
leged. Berkeley's system was so purely ideal that it 
stood next door to skepticism, and led logically and 
immediately to the philosophical distrust of Hume. 2 
Metaphysical doubt and religious doubt united in 
Hume, and Johnson looked upon the two as concomi- 

1 Life 1. 471. 

2 Leslie Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth 
Century 1, 42, 3, 



lvi INTRODUCTION 

tant. At least they would become such in his own 
case, if he were to admit either to a place in his mind. 
He therefore leaned away from the spiritual temptations 
which metaphysics held out to him, and especially ab- 
jured Berkeley anism from an instinct of the dangers 
to his faith which it would involve. 

Rasselas, more clearly than any other of Johnson's 
writings, illustrates his consistent attitude towards 
theories of living and of moral philosophy, particularly 
such as he felt were gaining too much vogue at his own 
time. The doctrines of optimism, primitive simplicity, the 
life according to nature, are summoned and dismissed as 
mere theories, untested and unrelated to the stern reality 
of life in the world. The whole review is occasionally 
precipitated into a brief and solemn sentence so charged 
with sanity and wisdom that it cannot be forgotten. 
' When scruples importune you, which you in your 
lucid moments know to be vain, do not stand to parley, 
but fly to business.' i Do not suffer life to stagnate ; 
it will grow muddy for want of motion; commit your- 
self again to the current of the world.' i It seems to 
me that while you are making the choice of life, you 
neglect to live.' 

XIV 

With all his sense of the realities of life, Johnson was 
in some respects a mystic. He never for a moment was 
unconscious of the mysteries that surround the earthly 
life. They haunted him. Contemplation of birth, death, 
immortality, stirred him with unutterable emotion. 
Even in so slight a trait as his fondness for the old 
romances his love of mystery appears, and the inference 
that he was superstitious and believed in ghosts is but 
a coarse and clumsy interpretation of his mysticism. 
His eagerness to test alleged cases of second sight, and 
his part in the notorious Cock Lane affair, show a 
kind of skepticism in such matters that was a sufficient 



INTRODUCTION lvii 

safeguard from vagaries of superstition. He was i glad 
to have every evidence of the spiritual world'; 1 and 
of its manifestation he said : l All argument is against 
it; but all belief is for it.' 2 Out of his agony at the 
death of his wife he prays that she may be allowed to 
have some care of him : i Grant that I may enjoy the 
good effects of her attention and ministration, whether 
exercised by appearance, impulses, dreams, or in any 
other manner agreeable to thy Government.' 3 But in 
this there is neither the fear nor the selfishness which 
are the marks of superstition. Such faith was a part 
of Johnson's religion. 

In his religious faith appears the noblest side of 
Johnson's nature. All that he says or does refers itself 
ultimately to that. His reverence, his loyalty, and his 
affection are its three determining traits. It was un- 
wavering, mystic, not shrunken with any astringent 
tenet or personal interpretation. 

Boswell, with no intention of reproach, called him a 
dignified Methodist, and there was gossip to the effect 
that he died a member of that sect. This signifies noth- 
ing more than the breadth of his religion. Sectarianism 
was to him neither lovely nor desirable. With all his 
conservative fidelity to the Church of England, he seems 
to have felt the real significance of Methodism, and of 
its rise during his time. In the English Church there 
was too much conventionality, too secure intellectualism. 
To Johnson the democrat it was clearly guilty of neglect- 
ing its humbler children. He therefore sympathized 
with Methodism in its popular ministrations. He ap- 
preciated its appeal to the emotions which the preaching 
of the English Church, so little touched with them it- 
self, had come to neglect in its hearers. 

On the other hand Johnson felt the absence of in- 
tellectual substructure in Methodism. Methodists at 
Oxford are like the cow — l a very good animal in the 
1 Life 4. 298. 2 IUd. 3. 235. 3 Misc. 1. 11. 



lviii INTRODUCTION 

field : but we turn her out of a garden.' 1 But in his 
own life he represents the reconciliation of both elements 
in faith — intellect and emotion. He is superior to the 
mere rationalist of his or any other time in the pro- 
found feeling of his religion ; but 'his religious emotion 
is supported by the constancy and clearness of his 
faith. 

He could not have lived when he did and escape the 
temptations of religious doubt,; at every turn there is 
evidence that his battle with unbelief was fierce and 
incessant, and that it was carried on, not only on his 
own behalf, but with a sense of championship for his 
own generation and for generations to come. At his 
death Sir Joshua Reynolds, a good man, but not an 
6 enthusiast/ said of Johnson that, i so far from denying 
Christ, he had been, in his age, his greatest champion.' 2 

The intensity of his feeling, and the emphasis of his 
words at every recurrence of the subject, indicate its 
supreme importance for him. 

His terror at the thought or suggestion of death in 
any form is but the manifestation of his doubt. This 
fear seems to have turned partly upon his dread of final 
judgment and his distrust of his own merits. But he was 
also haunted continually by his uncertainty of the con- 
ditions that lie beyond this life. It is not surprising, 
then, that at the moments when he is most intensely 
concerned with the unalterable fact of death, his re- 
ligious faith emerges in its purest and most beautiful 
form. We shall look for it most profitably in the letters 
to his dying mother, in his account of his farewell 
to her old servant, Catherine Chambers ; but chiefly it 
shines forth in those last moments of his, when he 
advanced toward his mortal change with the same 
courage that had made his hard life heroic, and with 
a new peace that marked his final triumph over the 
enemies of his noble spirit. 

*Life 2. 187. 

2 Leslie and Taylor, Life of Reynolds 2. 459. 



CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE OF JOHNSON'S LIFE 

1709. Born at Lichfield, September 18. 

1728-9. Pembroke College, Oxford. Conversion. 

1729-35. No settled employment; teaches at Bosworth and 

Edial. 
1735. Marries Mrs. Porter. 

1737. Visits London with Garrick; settles there, 

1738. Begins contributing to Cave's Gentleman's Maga- 
zine. London. 

1740-43. Reports Parliamentary debates for Cave. 
1744. Life of Savage. 

1747. Prologue on the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre; 
Plan for a Dictionary of the English Language. 

1747-55. Writes the Dictionary. 

1748. Vanity of Human Wishes; Irene acted. 

1750-52. Rambler. 

1752. Death of his wife. Meets Reynolds. 

1753. Adventurer. 

1754. First visit to Oxford since his student days. 

1755. Letter to Chesterfield; Dictionary published. Meets 
Langton. 

1756-7. Writes for Literary Magazine; begins edition of 

Shakespeare. 
1758-60. Idler. 

1758. Gets to know Burney. 

1759. Death of his mother; Rasselas. First meets Gold- 
smith. Robert Burns born. 

1762. Receives pension. 

1763. First meets Boswell. 

1764. Literary Club founded. 

Jix 



lx CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE 

1764 or 1765. First knows the Thrales. 
1765. Shakespeare published. 
1767. Interview with George III. 

1770. False Alarm published. Wordsworth born. 

1771. Falkland's Islands. Walter Scott born. 

1773. Travels in Scotland and the Hebrides. 

1774. Journey to the Western Islands; The Patriot. 
Death of Goldsmith. 

1775. Taxation no Tyranny. Made LL.D. at Oxford. 
Travels in France. 

1777-81. Lives of the Poets. 
1779. Death of Garrick. 

1781. Death of Thrale. 

1782. Death of Levett. 

1783. Suffers a stroke of paralysis. 

1784. Long illness and partial recovery. Mrs. Thrale 
marries Piozzi. Death, December 13. 



SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 



PREFATORY NOTE OX LONDON 

Johnson's London was written in 1738,, before he was 
twenty-nine. He had first come to town the preceding 
year, and meanwhile had nearly starved as an obscure 
hack-writer in the service of Cave and his Gentleman's 
Magazine. London helped him to emerge from this ob- 
scurity. 

Johnson wrote it rapidly, and offered it to Cave as the 
work of a man whose name he would not give. ' I cannot 
help taking notice, ' he wrote, ' that besides what the au- 
thor may hope for on account of his abilities, he has like- 
wise another claim to your regard, as he lies at present 
under very disadvantageous circumstances of fortune.' 
The poem was finally sold with all rights for ten guineas 
— neither a high nor a low price for the times. 

It was published anonymously on the same day as Pope's 
1738, and promptly made a sensation in the literary 
world of London. It reached a second edition within a 
week. Pope said of the unknown poet : ' He will soon 
be deterred He learned Johnson's name, and took part in 
an unsuccessful attempt to get him the degree of Masfsr of 
Arts from Dublin. 

As an imitation of Juvenal it follows the details of the 
original more closely than The Vanity of Human Wishes; 
many a line is a bit of brilliant translation. But too close 
an imitation has led the poet sometimes to describe a 
state of things more true of Rome than of L ndon. 

The poem is rather a brilliant academic performance 
than a serious satire, yet it expresses with much vigor, 
Johnson's hatred of insincerity and servile meanness, and 
his sense of public danger which lies in forgetting the 
simplicity and ideals of an earlier period in England. On 
the other hand, some of the sentiments seem quite un- 
Jolmsonian. He suspects the government, and fears tyr- 



2 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

anny ; lie talks in the ' patriotic ' strain which he after- 
wards condemned; he commends the ' pleasing banks/ and 
' peaceful vales ' of the country as better than the dark 
and swarming life of the city ; and ' Hibernia's land ' and 
* the rocks of Scotland/ which he scorned in later life, he 
now prefers to the Strand. He even glorifies poverty, 
which he came to regard as an unqualified evil. 

But these sentiments are not central in the poem, nor 
inconsistent with later opinion. They are due chiefly 
to his imitation of Juvenal, and partly to his great hard- 
ships at the time. After all his muse does not ' snarl/ 
but appears in a mood of lively abandon. 



ILonDon : a jpoem 

IX IMITATION OF THE THIRD SATIRE 
OF JUVENAL 

— Quis iniqusB 
Tarn patiens urbis, tarn ferreus ut teneat se? — Jut. 1. 30, 1. 

Though grief and fondness in my breast rebel, 

When injur'd Thales bids the town farewell,. 

Yet still my calmer thoughts his choice commend, 

(I praise the hermit, but regret the friend) 

Resolv'd at length, from vice and London far, 5 

To breathe in distant fields a purer air; 

And, fix'd on Cambria's solitary shore, 

Give to St. David one true Briton more. 

For who would leave, unbrib'd, Hibernia's land, 
Or change the rocks of Scotland for the Strand? 10 

There none are swept by sudden fate away, 
But all whom hunger spares with age decay: 
Here malice, rapine, accident, conspire, 
And now a rabble rages, now a fire; 

Their ambush here relentless ruffians lay, 15 

And here the fell attorney prowls for prey; 
Here falling houses thunder on your head, 
And here a female atheist talks you dead. 

While Thales waits the wherry that contains 
Of dissipated wealth the small remains, 20 

On Thames' s banks in silent thought we stood, 
Where Greenwich smiles upon the silver flood; 
Struck with the seat that gave Eliza birth, 
We kneel, and kiss the consecrated earth; 
In pleasing dreams the blissful age renew, 25 

And call Britannia's glories back to view; 

3 



4 ' SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

Behold her cross triumphant on the main, 
The guard of Commerce and the dread of Spain, 
Ere masquerades debaueh'd, excise oppress'd, 
\JDj English honor grew a standing jest. 3Q 

A transient calm the happy scenes bestow, 
And for a moment lull the sense of woe. 
At length awaking, with contemptuous frown 
indignant Thales eyes the neighb'ring town. 

Since worth, he cries, in these degen'rate days 35 

Wants ev'n the cheap reward of empty praise; 
In those curs'd walls, devote to vice and gain, 
Since unrewarded science toils in vain; 
Since hope but soothes to double my distress, 
And ev'ry moment leaves my little less; 40 

While yet my steady steps no staff sustains, 
And life still vig'rous revels in my veins, 
Grant me, kind heaven, to find some happier place, 
Where honesty and sense are no disgrace; 
Some pleasing bank where verdant osiers play, 45 

Some peaceful vale with nature's paintings gay, 
Where once the harass'd Briton found repose, 
And safe in poverty defy'd his foes; 
Some secret cell, ye Pow'rs, indulgent give. 

Let live here, for has learn'd to live. 50 

Here let those reign, whom pensions can incite 

To vote a patriot black, a courtier white; 

Explain. their country's dear-bought rights away, 

And plead for pirates in the face of day; 

With slavish tenets taint our poison'd youth, 55 

And lend a lie the confidence of truth. 

Let such raise palaces, and manors buy, 
Collect a tax, or farm a lottery; 
With warbling eunuchs fill a licens'd stage. 
And lull to servitude a thoughtless age. 60 

Heroes, proceed! what bounds your pride shall hold? 
What check restrain your thirst of pow'r and gold? 
Behold rebellious virtue quite o'erthrown, 
Behold our fame, our wealth, our lives your own. 

To such the plunder of land is giv'n, 65 

When public crimes inflame the wrath of Heav'n; 
But what, my friend, what hope remains for me, 



LOXDOX: A POEM 



Who start at theft, and blush at perjury? 

Who scarce forbear, though Britain's court he sing, 

To pluck a titled poet's borrowed wing; 70 

A statesman's logic unconvinc'd can hear, 

And dare to slumber o'er the Gazetteer; 

Despise a fool in half his pension dress'd, 

And strive in vain to laugh at Clodio's jest. 

Others with softer smiles, and subtler art, 75 

Can sap the principles, or taint the heart; 
With more address a lover's note convey, 
Or bribe a virgin's innocence away. 
Well may they rise, while I, whose rustic tongue 
Ne'er knew to puzzle right, or varnish wrong, 80 

Spurn'd as a beggar, dreaded as a spy, 
Live unregarded, unlamented die. 

For what but social guilt the friend endears? 
Who shares Orgilio's crimes, his fortune shares. 
But thou, should tempting villainy present 85 

All Marlb'rough hoarded, or all Villiers spent, 
Turn from the glitt'ring bribe thy scornful eye, 
Nbr sell for gold, what gold could never buy, 
The peaceful slumber, self-approving day, 
Unsullied fame, and conscience ever gay. 90 

The cheated nation's happy fav'rites, see! 
Mark whom the great caress, who frown on me! 
Loxdox ! the needy villain's gen'ral home. 
The common sewer of Paris and of Rome; 
With eager thirst, by folly or by fate, 95 

Sucks in the dregs of each corrupted state. 
Forgive my transports on a theme like this, 
I cannot bear a French metropolis. 

Illustrious Edward! from the realms of day, 
The land of heroes and of saints survey; 100 

Nor hope the British lineaments to trace, 
The rustic grandeur, or the surly grace; 
But, lost in thoughtless ease and empty show, 
Behold the warrior dwindled to a beau; 
Sense, freedom, piety, reflu'd away, 105 

Of France, the mimic, and of Spain the prey. 

All that at home no more can beg or steal, 
Or like a gibbet better than a wheel; 



SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

Hiss'd from the stage, or hooted from the court, 
Their air, their dress, their politics, import; 
Obsequious, artful, voluble, and gay, 
On Britain's fond credulity they prey. 
No gainful trade their industry can 'scape, 
They sing, they dance, clean shoes, or cure a clap: 
All sciences a fasting Monsieur knows, 
And, bid him go to hell, to hell he goes. 

Ah! what avails it, that, from slav'ry far, 
I drew the breath of life in English air; 
Was early taught a Briton's right to prize, 
And lisp the tale of Henry's victories; 
If the gull'd conqueror receives the chain, 
And flattery prevails when arms are vain? 

Studious to please, and ready to submit, 
The supple Gaul was born a parasite : 
Still to his int'rest true, where'er he goes, 
Wit, brav'ry, worth, his lavish tongue bestows; 
In ev'ry face a thousand graces shine, 
From ev'ry tongue flows harmony divine. 
These arts in vain our rugged natives try, 
Strain out with falt'ring diffidence a lie, 
And gain a kick for awkward flattery. 

Besides, with justice, this discerning age 
Admires their wond'rous talents for the stage: 
Well may they venture on the mimic's art, 
Who play from morn to night a borrow'd part; 
Practis'd their master's notions to embrace, 
Repeat his maxims, and reflect his face; 
With ev'ry wild absurdity comply, 
And view each object with another's eye; 
To shake with laughter ere the jest they hear, 
To pour at will the counterfeited tear; 
And, as their patron hints the cold or heat, 
To shake in dog-days, in December sweat. 

How, when competitors like these contend, 
Can surly virtue hope to fix a friend? 
Slaves that with serious impudence beguile, 
And lie without a blush, without a smile; 
Exalt each trifle, ev'ry vice adore, 
Your taste in snuff, your judgment in a whore; 



LOXDON: A POEM 7 

Can Balbo's eloquence applaud, and swear 150 

He gropes his breeches with a Monarch's air. 

For arts like these preferr'd, adniir'd, caress' d, 
They first invade your table, then your breast; 
Explore your secrets with insidious art. 
Watch the weak hour, and ransack all the heart; 155 

Then soon your ill-placed confidence repay, 
Commence your lords, and govern or betray. 

By numbers here from shame or censure free, 
All crimes are safe but hated poverty. 

This, only this, the rigid law pursues. 160 

This, only this, provokes the snarling Muse. 
The sober trader at a tatter'd cloak 
Wakes from his dream, and labors for a joke; 
With brisker air the silken courtiers gaze, 
And turn the varied taunt a thousand ways. 165 

Of all the griefs that harass the distress'd, 
Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest; 
Fate never wounds more deep the gen'rous heart, 
Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart. 

Has Heaven reserv'd, in pity to the poor, 170 

No pathless waste, or undiscover'd shore? 
No secret island in the boundless main? 
No peaceful desert } r et unclaim'd by Spain? 
Quick let us rise, the happy seats explore, 
And bear Oppression's insolence no more. 175 

This mournful truth is everywhere confess'd, 
Slow eises worth, by poverty depress'd: 
But here more slow, where all are slaves to gold, 
Where looks are merchandise, and smiles are sold: 
Where won by bribes, by flatteries implor'd, 180 

The groom retails the favors of his lord. 

But hark! th' affrighted crowd's tumultuous cries 
Roll through the streets, and thunder to the skies: 
Rais'd from some pleasing dream of wealth and pow'r, 
Some pompous palace, or some blissful bow'r, 185 

Aghast you start, and scarce with aching sight 
Sustain th' approaching fire's tremendous light; 
Swift from pursuing horrors take your way, 
And leave your little all to flames a prey; 
Then through the world a wretched vagrant roam, 190 



SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

For where can starving merit find a home? 

In vain your mournful narrative disclose, 

While all neglect, and most insult your woes. 

Should Heav'n's just bolts Orgilio's wealth confound, 

And spread his flaming palace on the ground, 195 

Swift o'er the land the dismal rumor flies, 

And public mournings pacify the skies; 

The laureat tribe in venal verse relate, 

How virtue wars with persecuting fate; 

With well-feign'd gratitude the pension'd band 200 

Refund the plunder of the beggar'd land. 

See! while he builds, the gaudy vassals come, 

And crowd with sudden wealth the rising dome; 

The price of boroughs and of souls restore, 

And raise his treasures higher than before : 205 

Now bless'd with all the baubles of the great, 

The polish'd marble and the shining plate, 

Orgilio sees the golden pile aspire, 

And hopes from angry Heav'n another fire. 

Could'st thou resign the park and play content, 210 

For the fair banks of Severn or of Trent; 
There migbt'st thou find some elegant retreat, 
Some hireling senator's deserted seat; 
And stretch thy prospects o'er the smiling land, 
For less than rent the dungeons of the Strand; 215 

There prune thy walks, support thy drooping flowers, 
Direct thy rivulets, and twine thy bowers ; 
And, while thy grounds a cheap repast afford,, 
Despise the dainties of a venal lord: 

There ev'ry bush with Nature's music rings, 220 

There ev'ry breeze bears health upon its wings; 
On all thy hours security shall smile, 
And bless thine evening walk and morning toil. 

Prepare for death if here at night you roam, 
And sign your will before you sup from home. 225 

Some fiery fop, with new commission vain, 
Who sleeps on brambles till he kills his man; 
Some frolic drunkard, reeling from a feast, 
Provokes a broil, and stabs you for a jest. 
Yet ev'n these heroes, mischievously gay, 230 

Lords of the street, and terrors of the way; 



LOXDOX: A P0E3I 9 

Flush'd as they are with folly, youth, and wine, 

Their prudent insults to the poor confine; 

Afar they mark the flambeau's bright approach, 

And shun the shining train, and golden coach. 235 

In vain, these dangers past, your doors you close, 
And hope the balmy blessings of repose; 
Cruel with guilt, and daring with despair, 
The midnight niurd'rer bursts the faithless bar; 
Invades the sacred hour of silent rest, 240 

And leaves, unseen, a dagger in your breast. 

Scarce can our fields, such crowds at Tyburn die, 
With hemp the gallows and the fleet supply. 
Propose your schemes, ye senator ian band, 
Whose ways and means support the sinking land: 245 

Lest ropes be wanting in the tempting spring, 
To rig another convoy for the king. 

A single gaol, in Alfred's golden reign, 
Could half the nations criminals contain; 
Fair justice, then, without constraint ador'd, 250 

Held high the steady scale, but sheath'd the sword; 
Xo spies were paid, no special juries known, 
Blest age! but, ah, how diff'rent from our own! 

Much could I add, but see the boat at hand, 
The tide retiring calls me from the land: 255 

Farewell! — When youth, and health, and fortune spent 
Thou fly'st for refuge to the Wilds of Kent; 
And, tir'd like me with follies and with crimes, 
In angry numbers warn'st succeeding times; 
Then shall thy friend, nor thou refuse his aid, 260 

Still foe to vice, forsake his Cambrian shade; 
In virtue's cause once more exert his rage, 
Thy satire point, and animate thy page. 



PERFATORY NOTE ON VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES 

The Vanity of Human Wishes was written and published 
when Johnson was thirty-nine. In the ten years since 
London he had continued writing for the Gentleman's 
Magazine, but his contributions diminished in number as 
his independent writings increased. Among these is the 
Life of Savage, one of his most brilliant performances. 
He had also finished his unsuccessful tragedy Irene, had 
begun the Dictionary, had written up two volumes of 
Parliamentary Debates from the notes of hired listeners, 
and had struck off a great number of reviews, translations, 
brief biographies, and ephemeral essays. 

By this time he acquired some reputation. His tragedy 
was soon presented by Gar rick, and the publication of The 
Vanity of Human Wishes, a month before the performance, 
helped to win for it the fairly respectful hearing which 
the London public granted it. 

The poem was written at Hampstead, a place now con- 
secrated by many literary associations. Johnson told 
Steevens : ' I wrote the first seventy lines in the course 
of one morning. . . . The whole was composed before I 
threw a single couplet on paper' (Johnsonian Miscellanies 
2.313), and he afterwards recalled writing a hundred lines 
of it in one day. He sold the poem for fifteen guineas. 

Garrick used to say : ( When Johnson lived with the 
Herveys, and saw a good deal of what was passing in 
life, he wrote his London, which is lively and easy. 
When he became more retired he gave us his Vanity of 
Human Wishes, which is as hard as Greek. Had he gone 
on to imitate another satire, it would have been as hard 
as Hebrew.' Nevertheless he had expected to imitate other 
satires of Juvenal, for he ' had them all in his head.' 
v At a glance The Vanity of Human Wishes is seen to 
possess more weight and solemn dignity than London. It 

10 



NOTE ON VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES 11 

is a more serious performance. It contains more of John- 
son himself^ and less of Juvenal. To be sure he has fol- 
lowed the order of topics in his original — desire of power, 
of eloquence, of military glory, of long life, of beauty — 
but these are not the main topics of his criticism. The 
poem is deeply tinged with his constitutional melancholy, 
brooding upon the vicissitude of things and the futility 
of endeavor. It deplores blind and passionate devotion to 
the achievement of any one aim. It denounces such evils 
of his time as corruption in public and private life, pre- 
tense, sycophancy, hardness of heart, prostitution of 
literature to mere gain, and the neglect of merit; against 
such abuses he contended for the rest of his life. 



/ 



£be WanttE of Ibuman Wishes 

IN IMITATION OF THE TENTH SATIRE 
OF JUVENAL 

Let Observation with extensive view 

Survey mankind, from China to Peru; 

Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife, 

And watch the busy scenes of crowded life; 

Then say how hope and fear, desire and hate, 5 

O'erspread with snares the clouded maze of fate, 

Where wav'ring man, betrayed by vent'rous pride 

To chase the dreary paths without a guide, 

As treacherous phantoms in the mist delude, 

Shuns fancied ills, or chases airy good; 10 

How rarely reason guides the stubborn choice, 

Rules the bold hand, or prompts the suppliant voice, 

How Nations sink, by darling schemes oppress'd, 

When vengeance listens to the fool's request. 

Fate wings with ev'ry wish th' afflictive dart, 15 

Each gift of nature and each grace of art; 

With fatal heat impetuous courage glows, 

With fatal sweetness elocution flows, 

Impeachment stops the speaker's pow'rful breath, 

And restless fire precipitates on death. 20 

But, scarce observ'd, the knowing and the bold 
Fall in the gen'ral massacre of gold; 
Wide wasting pest! that rages unconfin'd, 
And crowds with crimes the records of mankind; 
For gold his sword the hireling ruffian draws, 25 

For gold the hireling judge distorts the laws; 
Wealth heap'd on wealth, nor truth nor safety buys, 
The dangers gather as the treasures rise. 

Let Hist'ry tell where rival kings command, 
And dubious title shakes the madded land, 30 

Wlien statutes glean the refuse of the sword, 
How much more safe the vassal than the lord: 
Low skulks the hind beneath the rage of power, 

12 



THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES 13 

And leaves the wealthy traitor in the Tower, 

Untouched his cottage, and his slumbers sound, 35 

Though Confiscation's vultures hover round. 

The needy traveller, serene and gay, 
Walks the wild heath, and sings his toil away. 
Does envy seize thee? crush th 5 upbraiding joy, 
Increase his riches, and his peace destroy: 40 

Now fears in dire vicissitude invade, 
The rustling brake alarms, and cruiv'ring shade, 
Nor light nor darkness bring his pain relief, 
One shows the plunder, and one hides the thief. 

Yet still one gen'ral cry the skies assails, 45 

And gain and grandeur load the tainted gales: 
Few know the toiling statesman's fear or care, 
Th' insidious rival and the gaping heir. -w%> 

Once more, Democritus, arise on earth, 

With cheerful wisdom and instructive mirth. 50 

See motley life in modern trappings dress'd, 
And feed with varied fools th' eternal jest : 
Thou who could'st laugh where want enchain'd caprice, 
Toil crush'd conceit, and man was of a piece; 
Where wealth unlovd without a mourner died; 55 

And scarce a sycophant was fed by pride; 
Where ne'er was known the form of mock debate, 
Or seen a new-made mayor's unwieldy state; 
Where change of favrites made no change of laws, u ^~ 
And senates heard before they judg'd a cause; qq 

How would'st thou shake at Britain's modish tribe, 
Dart the quick taunt, and edge the piercing gibe? 
Attentive truth and nature to descry, 
And pierce each scene with philosophic eye, 
To thee were solemn toys, or empty show, 65 

The robes of pleasure and the veils of woe: 
All aid the farce, and all thy mirth maintain, 
Whose joys are causeless, or whose griefs are vain. 

Such was the scorn that fill'd the sage's mind, 
Renew'd at ev'ry glance on human kind; 70 

How just that scorn ere yet thy voice declare, 
Search ev'ry state, and canvass ev'ry pray'r. 

Unnumber'd suppliants crowd Preferment's gate, 
Athirst for wealth, and burning to be great; 



li SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

Delusive Fortune hears th' incessant call, 75 

They mount, they shine, evaporate, and fall. 
On ev'ry stage the foes of peace attend, 
Hate dogs their flight, and insult mocks their end. 
Love ends with hope, the sinking statv ^u's door 
Pours in the morning worshipper no mcl$! 80 

r\ For growing names the weekly scribbler lies, 
To growing wealth the dedicator flies; 
From ev'ry room descends the painted face, 
That hung the bright palladium of the place; 
And, smok'd in kitchens, or in auctions sold, 85 

To better features yields the frame of gold; 
For now no more we trace in ev'ry line 
Heroic worth, benevolence divine: 
The form distorted justifies the fall, 
And detestation rids th' indignant wall. 90 

But will not Britain hear the last appeal, 
Sign her foes' doom, or guard her fav'rites' zeal? 
Through Freedom's sons no more remonstrance rings, 
Degrading nobles and controlling kings; 
Our supple tribes repress their patriot throats, 95 

And ask no questions but the price of votes; 
With weekly libels and septennial ale, 
Their wish is full to riot and to rail. 

In full-blown dignity see Wolsey stand. 
Law in his voice, and fortune in his hand; 100 

To him the church, the realm, their pow'rs consign, 
Through him the rays of regal bounty shine, 
Turn'd by his nod the stream of honor flows, 
His smile alone security bestows: 
Still to new heights his restless wishes tow'r, 105 

Claim leads to claim, and pow'r advances pow'r; 
Till conquest unresisted ceas'd to please, 
And rights submitted left him none to seize. 
At length his sov'reign frowns — the train of state 
Mark the keen glance, and watch the sign to hate. 110 

Where'er he turns, he meets a stranger's eye, 
His suppliants scorn him, and his followers fly; 
Now drops at once the pride of awful state, 
The golden canopy, the glitt'ring plate, 
The regal palace, the luxurious board, 115 



THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES 15 

The liv'ried army, and the menial lord. 

With age, with cares, with maladies oppress'd, 

He seeks the refuge of monastic rest. 

Grief aids disease, remember'd folly stings, 

And his last hs reproach the faith of kings. 120 

Speak th .vhose thoughts at humble peace repine, 
Shall Wolsey's wealth, with Wolsey's end, be thine? 
Or liv'st thou now, with safer pride content, 
The wisest justice on the banks of Trent? 
For, why did Wolsey, near the steeps of fate, 125 

On weak foundations raise th' enormous weight? 
Why but to sink beneath misfortune's blow, 
With louder ruin to the gulfs below? ^xJ^ 

What gave great Yilliers to th' assassin's knife, 
And fix'd disease on Barley's closing life? 130 

What murder'd Wentworth, and what exil'd Hyde, 
By kings protected, and to kings allied? 
What but their wish indulg'd in courts to shine, 
And pow'r too great to keep, or to resign? 

When first the college rolls receive his name, 135 

The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame; 
Through all his veins the fever of renown 
Spreads from the strong contagion of the gown; 
O'er Bodley's dome his future labors spread, 
And Bacon's mansion trembles o'er his head. 140 

Are these thy views? Proceed, illustrious youth, 
And Virtue guard thee to the throne of Truth! 
Yet, should thy soul indulge the gen'rous heat 
Till captive Science yields her last retreat; 
Should reason guide thee with her brightest ray, 145 

And pour on misty Doubt resistless day; 
Should no false kindness lure to loose delight, 
Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright; 
Should tempting Xovelty thy cell refrain, 
And Sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain; 150 

Should Beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart, 
Xor claim the triumph of a letter 'd heart; 
Should no disease thy torpid veins invade, 
Xor Melancholy's phantoms haunt thy shade; 
Yet hope not life from grief or danger free, 155 

Xor think the doom of man revers'd for thee: 



16 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, 

And pause awhile from Letters, to be wise; 

There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, 

Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol. igo 

See nations, slowly wise and meanly just, 

To buried merit raise the tardy bust. 

If dreams yet natter, once again attend; 

Here Lydiat's life, and Galileo's, end. 

Nor deem, when Learning her last prize bestows, 165 

The glitt'ring eminence exempt from foes; 
See, when the vulgar 'scape, despis'd or aw'd, \s* 
Rebellion's vengeful talons seize on Latjj> 4 \^ 

From meaner minds, though smaller fines content; 
The plunder'd palace, or sequester'd rent; 170 

Mark'd out by dang'rous parts, he meets the shock, 
And fatal Learning leads him to the block: 
Around his tomb Let Art and Genius weep, 
But hear his death, ye blockheads, hear and sleep. 

The festal blazes, the triumphal show, 175 

The ravish'd standard, and the captive foe, 
The senate's thanks, the Gazette's pompous tale, 
With force resistless o'er the brave prevail. 
Such bribes the rapid Greek o'er Asia whirl'd, 
For such the. steady Romans shook the world; 180 

For such in distant lands the Britons shine, 



*% 



And stain with blood the Danube or the Rhine; 

This pow'r has praise, that virtue scarce can warm 

Till Fame supplies the universal charm. 

Yet Reason frowns on War's unequal game, 185 

Where wasted nations raise a single name; 

And mortgag'd states their grandsires' wreaths regret, 

From age to age in everlasting debt; 

Wreaths which at last the dear-bought right convey 

To rust on medals, or on stones decay. 190 

On what foundation stands the warrior's pride, 
How just his hopes, let Swedish Chakles decide; 
A frame of adamant, a soul of fire, 
No dangers fright him, and no labors tire; 
O'er love, o'er fear, extends his wide domain, 
Unconquerd lord of pleasure and of pain; 
No joys to him pacific sceptres yield, 



THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES 17 

War sounds the trump, he rushes to the field; 

Behold surrounding kings their pow'rs combine, 

And one capitulate, and one resign; 200 

Peace courts his hand, but spreads her charms in vain; 

' Think nothing gain'd/ he cries, ' till nought remain, 

On Moscow's walls till Gothic standards fly, 

And all be mine beneath the polar sky.' 

The march begins in military state, 205 

And nations on his eye suspended wait; 

Stern Famine guards the solitary coast, 

And Winter barricades the realms of Frost; 

He comes, nor want nor cold his course delay; — 

Hide, blushing Glory, hide Pultowa's day: 210 

The vanquished hero leaves his broken bands, 

And shows his miseries in distant lands; 

Condemn'd a needy supplicant to wait, 

While ladies interpose, and slaves debate. 

But did not Chance at length the error mend? 215 

Did no subverted empire mark his end? 

Did rival monarchs give the fatal wound? 

Or hostile millions press him to the ground? 

His fall was destin'd to a barren strand, 

A petty fortress, and a dubious hand; 220 

He left the name at which the world grew pale, 

To point a moral, or adorn a tale. 

All times their scenes of pompous woes afford, 
From Persia's tyrant to Bavaria's lord. 

In gay hostility and barb'rous pride, 225 

With half mankind embattled at his side, 
Great Xeexes comes to seize the certain prey, 
And starves exhausted regions in his way; 
Attendant Flatt'ry counts his myriads o'er, 
Till counted myriads soothe his pride no more; 230 

Fresh praise is tried till madness fires his mind, 
The waves he lashes, and enchains the wind; 
New pow'rs are claimed, new pow'rs are still bestow'd, 
Till rude resistance lops the spreading god; 
The daring Greeks deride the martial show, 235 

nd heap their valleys with the gaudy foe; 

i' insulted sea with humbler thought he gains, 
A single skiff to speed his flight remains; 



18 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

Th' incumber'd oar scarce leaves the dreaded coast 

Through purple billows and a floating host. 240 

The bold Bavarian, in a luckless hour, 
Tries the dread summits of a Cesarean pow'r, 
With unexpected legions bursts away, 
And sees defenseless realms receive his sway; 
Short sway! fair Austria spreads her mournful charms, 245 
The queen, the beauty, sets the world in arms; 
From hill to hill the beacon's rousing blaze 
Spreads wide the hope of plunder and of praise; 
The fierce Croatian, and the wild Hussar, 
With all the sons of ravage crowd the war; 250 

The baffled prince, in honor's flatt'ring bloom 
Of hasty greatness, finds the fatal doom, 
His foes' derision, and his subjects' blame, 
And steals to death from anguish and from shame. 

Enlarge my life with multitude of days! 255 

In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays; 
Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know, 
That life protracted is protracted woe. 
Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, 

And shuts up all the passages of joy: 260 

In vain their gifts the bounteous seasons pour, 
The fruit autumnal, and the vernal fiow'r; 
With listless eyes the dotard views the store, 
He views, and wonders that they please no more. 
Now pall the tasteless meats, and joyless wines, 265 

And Luxury with sighs her slave resigns. 
Approach, ye minstrels, try the soothing strain, 
Diffuse the tuneful lenitives of pain: 
Xo sounds, alas! would teach th' impervious ear, 
Though dancing mountains witness'd Orpheus near; 270 

Nor lute nor lyre his feeble pow'rs attend, 
Nor sweeter music of a virtuous friend; 
But everlasting dictates crowd his tongue, 
Perversely grave, or positively wrong. 

The still returning tale, and lingering jest, 275 

Perplex the fawning niece and pamper'd guest, 
While growing hopes scarce awe the gath'ring sneer, 
And scarce a legacy can bribe to hear; 
The watchful guests still hint the last offense; 



THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES 19 

The daughter^ petulance, the son's expense, 280 

Improve his heady rage with treach'rous skill, 
And mould his passions till they make his will. 

Unnumber'd maladies his joints invade, 
Lay siege to life, and press the dire blockade; 
But unextinguished Av'rice still remains, 285 

And dreaded losses aggravate his pains; 
He turns, with anxious heart and crippled hands, 
His bonds of debt, and mortgages of lands; 
Or views his coffers with suspicious eyes, 
Unlocks his gold, and counts it till he dies. 290 

But grant, the virtues of a temp'rate prime 
Bless with an age exempt from scorn or crime; 
An age that melts with unperceiv'd decay, 
And glides in modest innocence away; 

Whose peaceful day Benevolence endears, 295 

"Whose night congratulating Conscience cheers; 
The gen'ral fav'rite as the general friend: 
Such age there is, and who shall wish its end? 

Yet ev'n on this her load Misfortune flings, 
To press the weary minutes' flagging wings; 300 

New sorrow rises as the day returns, 
A sister sickens, or a daughter mourns. 
Now kindred Merit fills the sable bier, 
Now lacerated Friendship claims a tear; 
Year chases year, decay pursues decay, 305 

Still drops some joy from with'ring life away; 
New forms arise, and diff'rent views engage, 
Superfluous lags the vet'ran on the stage, 
Till pitying Nature signs the last release, 
And bids afflicted worth retire to peace. 310 

But few there are whom hours like these await, 
Who set unclouded in the gulfs of Fate. 
From Lydia's monarch should the search descend, 
By Solon caution'd to regard his end, 

In life's last scene what prodigies surprise, 315 

Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise! 
From Marlb'rough's eyes the streams of dotage flow, 
And Swift expires a driv'ler and a show\ 

The teeming mother anxious for her race, 
Begs for each birth the fortune of a face; 320 



20 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

Yet Vane could tell what ills from beauty spring; 

And Sedley curs'd the form that pleas' d a king. 

Ye nymphs of rosy lips and radiant eyes, 

Whom Pleasure keeps too busy to be wise; 

Whom joys with soft varieties invite, 325 

By day the frolic, and the dance by night; 

Who frown with vanity, who smile with art, 

And ask the latest fashion of the heart; 

What care, what rules, your heedless charms shall save, 

Each nymph your rival, and each youth your slave? 330 

Against your fame with fondness hate combines, 

The rival batters, and the lover mines. 

With distant voice neglected Virtue calls, 

Less heard and less, the faint remonstrance falls; 

Tir'd with contempt, she quits the slipp'ry reign, 335 

And Pride and Prudence take her seat in vain. 

In crowd at once, where none the pass defend, 

The harmless freedom and the private friend. 

The guardians yield, by force superior ply'd: 

To Interest, Prudence; and to Flatt'ry, Pride. 340 

Here Beauty falls betray'd, despis'd, distress'd, 

And hissing infamy proclaims the rest. 

Where then shall Hope and Fear their objects find? 
Must dull suspense corrupt the stagnant mind? 
Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, 345 

Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate? 
Must no dislike alarm, no wishes rise, 
No cries invoke the mercies of the skies? 
Enquirer, cease; petitions yet remain 
W 7 hich Heav'n may hear, nor deem Religion vain. 350 

Still raise for good the supplicating voice, 
But leave to Heav'n the measure and the choice. 
Safe in his pow'r whose eyes discern afar 
The secret ambush of a specious pray'r; 
Implore his aid, in his decisions rest, 355 

Secure, whatever he gives, he gives the best. 
Yet, when the sense of sacred presence fires, 
And strong devotion to the skies aspires, 
Pour forth thy fervors for a healthful mind, 
Obedient passions, and a will resign'd; 360 

For love, which scarce collective man can fill; 



THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES 21 

For patience, sovereign o'er transmuted ill; 

For faith, that, panting for a happier seat, 

Counts death kind Xature's signal of retreat. 

These goods for man the laws of Heav'n ordain, 365 

These goods he grants, who grants the pow'r to gain; 

With these celestial Wisdom calms the mind, 

And makes the happiness she does not rind. 



i 



prologue 

SPOKEN BY MR. GARRICK 

AT THE" OPENING OF 
THE THEATRE ROYAL, DRURY LANE, 1747 

When Learning's triumph o'er her barb'rous foes 
First rear'd the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose; 
Each change of many-color'd life he drew, 
Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new: 
Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, 
And panting Time toiPd after him in vain. 
His pow'rful strokes presiding Truth impress'd, 
And unresisted Passion storm'd the breast. 

Then Jonson came, instructed from the school, 
To please in method, and invent by rule; \Q 

His studious patience and laborious art, 
By regular approach assail'd the heart: 
Cold Approbation gave' the ling'ring bays, 
For those who durst not censure scarce could praise. 
A mortal born, he met the gen'ral doom, 15 

But left, like Egypt's kings a lasting tomb. 

The wits of Charles found easier ways to fame, 
Nor wish'd for Jonson's art, or Shakespeare's flame. 
Themselves they studied, as they felt they writ; 
Intrigue was plot, obscenity was wit. 20 

Vice always found a sympathetic friend; 
They pleas'd their age, and did not aim to mend. 
Yet bards like these aspir'd to lasting praise, 
And proudly hoped to pimp in future days. 
Their cause was gen'ral, their supports were strong, 25 

Their slaves were willing, and their reign was long: 
Till Shame regain'd the post that Sense betray 'd, 

22 



PROLOGUE 23 

And Virtue call'd Oblivion to her aid. 

Then, crush'd by rules, and weaken'd as refin'd, 
For years the power of Tragedy declin'd; 30 

From bard to bard the frigid caution crept, 
Till Declamation roar'd whilst Passion slept; 
Yet still did Virtue deign the stage to tread, 
Philosophy remained, though Nature fled, 
But forc'd, at length, her ancient reign to quit, 35 

She saw great Faustus lay the ghost of Wit; 
Exulting Folly haiPd the joyful day, 
And Pantomime and Song confirmed her sway. 

But who the coming changes can presage, 
And mark the future periods of the Stage? 40 

Perhaps, if skill could distant times explore, 
New Behns, new Durfeys, yet remain in store; 
Perhaps where Lear has rav'd, and Hamlet died, 
On flying cars new sorcerers may ride: 

Perhaps ( for who can guess th' effects of chance ? ) 45 

Here Hunt may box, or Mahomet may dance. 

Hard is his lot that here by Fortune plac'd, 
Must watch the wild vicissitudes of taste; 
With ev'ry meteor of caprice must play, 
And chase the new-blown bubbles of the day. 50 

Ah! let not Censure term our fate our choice, 
The stage but echoes back the public voice; 
The drama's laws, the drama's patrons give, 
For we that live to please, must please to live. 

Then prompt no more the follies you decry, 55 

As tyrants doom their tools of guilt to die; 
'Tis Yours, this night, to bid the reign commence 
Of rescued Nature and reviving Sense; 
To chase the charms of Sound, the pomp of Show, 
For useful Mirth and salutary Woe; 60 

Bid scenic Virtue form the rising age, 
And Truth diffuse her radiance from the stage. 



PEEFATORY NOTE ON THE DICTIONARY. 

None of Johnson's works yielded him such return of 
fame as his Dictionary. He began it in 1747, the year be- 
fore publishing his Vanity of Human Wishes, and it was 
published in 1755. He had expected to finish the enor- 
mous task in three years, and, after it was done, said that 
he had taken longer than was necessary. But it suffered 
many interruptions. During two of these years he wrote 
two essays a week of about twelve hundred words each 
for The Rambler. Following this came his distracting 
grief at the death of his wife; and no doubt the work suf- 
fered occasional lapses from his natural dilatoriness. As 
it is, one may wonder at the brief time in which the Dic- 
tionary was written. Johnson says that he enjoyed the 
work, though it was harder than writing poetry. He was 
accustomed to speak of it with good-natured disparage- 
ment, and defined a lexicographer as f a harmless drudge.' 

In undertaking the task he contracted with the book- 
sellers for £1575. Out of this he was to pay six amanuen- 
ses, and provide materials and a workshop. Five of these 
assistants, as it happened, were Scotchmen, and most of 
them wretchedly poor. Johnson never failed in his kind- 
ness to these men, and in later days more than one of them 
was relieved by his charity. He received his money in 
small amounts during the progress of the work, and, on 
one occasion when it was not forthcoming, he threatened a 
strike, which brought his employers to terms. He spent 
the money carefully, and yet at the publication of the 
book the £1575 was gone, and in the following year, 1756, 
he was arrested and imprisoned for debt. His friend 
Richardson, the novelist-, relieved him. 

It was evidently the publishers' desire that the Diction- 
ary should gain what it could from a dedication to Lord 
Chesterfield; he was the arbiter elegantiarum of the times, 

24 



PREFATORY NOTE OX THE DICTIOXARY 25 

and. as Johnson said twenty-five years later. ' the best 
speaker in the House of Lords.' Johnson's compliance with 
their wish was, he said, ' a casual excuse for laziness.' 
Evidently he had some interview with Chesterfield, and ad- 
dressed to him the Plan or Prospectus of the work. But 
the patron thus solicited took no notice of him, and seems 
a year later to have insulted Johnson, who had come as a 
visitor to his house. Johnson, who was at once sensitive, 
proud, and brave, resolved to dedicate the Dictionary to no 
man. Allusions to the affair appear in The Vanity of 
Human 'Wishes, and are not uncommon in The Rambler; 
the last essay expresses his stout resolution not to dedicate 
that work at all. 

On the eve of publication Chesterfield wrote two flippant 
puffs of the expected Dictionary for The World. Both 
were certain to offend Johnson by their tone and their in- 
decent allusion. ' I have sailed a long and painful voyage 
around the world of the English language; and does he 
now send out two cockboats to tow me into harbor ? ' 
Years later he said to Boswell : i Sir. after making great 
professions, he had for many years taken no notice of me; 
but when my Dictionary was coming out, he fell a scrib- 
bling in The World about it. Upon which I wrote him a 
letter expressed in civil terms, but such as might show 
him that I did not mind what he said or wrote, and that 
I was done with him.' 

The letter is essentially a Declaration of Independence 
for literature. It became the talk of the town, and the 
redoubtable Warburton congratulated Johnson. No doubt 
it encouraged many an obscure and struggling author. 
Goldsmith never dedicated except to his brother and his 
friends, Reynolds and Johnson. Chesterfield, quite as 
proud as Johnson, tried to pass off the affair with affected 
disinterest, even showing the letter and praising its style. 
But this attitude could not obliterate its significance, or 
lessen the admiration of Johnson's ' defensive pride' in 
generations to come. 



£o tbe IRtgbt Ibonorable tbe JEatl of Cbesterfielfc 

February 7, 1755. 
My Lord: 

I have lately been informed by the proprietor of 
The World, that two papers, in which my Dictionary 
is recommended to the public, were written by your 5 
Lordship. To be so distinguished is an honor which, 
being very little accustomed to favors from the great, 
I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to 
acknowledge. 

When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited 10 
your Lordship, I was overpowered, like the rest of 
mankind, by the enchantment of your address; and I 
could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself 
4 Le yainqueur du vainqueur de la terre ? ; that I might 
obtain that regard for which I saw the world contend- 15 
ing; but I found my attendance so little encouraged, 
that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to 
continue it. When I had once addressed your Lord- 
ship in public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing 
which a retired and uneourtly scholar can possess. 1 20 
had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased 
to have his all neglected, be it ever so little. 

Seven years, my Lord, have now passed, since I waited 
in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door ; 
during which time I have been pushing on my work 25 
through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and 
have brought it at last to the verge of publication, with- 
out one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or 
one smile of favor. Such treatment I did not expect, 
for I never had a Patron before. 30 

26 



TO THE EARL OF CHESTERFIELD 27 

The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with 
Love, and found him a native of the rocks. 

Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with un- 
concern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, 
5 when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? 
The notice which you have been pleased to take of 
my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it 
has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot 
enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till 
101 am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very 
cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no 
benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the 
Public should consider me as owing that to a Patron, 
which Providence has enabled me to do for myself. 
15 Having carried on my work thus far with so little 
obligation to any favorer of learning, I shall not be 
disappomted though I should conclude it, if less be 
possible, with less; for I have been long wakened from 
that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself 
20 with so much exultation, 

My Lord, 

Your Lordship's most humble, 
Most obedient servant, 

Sam. Johnson". 



I 



PKEFATOEY NOTE ON THE PREFACE 

The Preface to the Dictionary was composed rapidly at 
the completion of that great work. Johnson once said to 
Sir Joshua Reynolds : i There are two things which I am 
confident that I can do very well: One is an introduction 
to any literary work, stating what it is to contain, and 
how it should be executed in the most perfect manner; 
the other is a conclusion showing from various causes why 
the execution has not been equal to what the author 
promised to himself and to the public.' The Preface is one 
of his noblest utterances. It is sublime with his splendid 
confidence in his powers, yet graced with his modesty and 
his confession of disappointment. It is ennobled with his 
independence, and deeply impressive with the melancholy 
which pervades it. 

The year of publication seems to have been the most 
depressing of his life. Many upon whose affection he was 
most dependent had died, and very few of the friendships 
that consoled his later life were yet formed. He had not 
yet come to know Boswell, Goldsmith, the Thrales, or the 
Burneys. But apart from outw^ard conditions, it is wholly 
natural for one of Johnson's temperament to experience a 
strong depression rather than an elevation of spirits, on 
completing a work to which he had so long been devoting 
his best energies and powers. 



28 



preface to tbe JEnaltsb 2>tctfonat£ 

It is the fate of those who toil at the lower employ- 
ments of life, to be rather driven by the fear of evil, 
than attracted by the prospect of good; to be exposed 
to censure, without hope of praise; to be disgraced 
5 by miscarriage, or punished for neglect, where success 
would have been without applause, and diligence with- 
out reward. 

Among these unhappy mortals is the writer of dic- 
tionaries; whom mankind have considered, not as the 

10 pupil, but the slave of science, the pioneer of literature, 
doomed only to remove rubbish and clear obstructions 
from the paths through which Learning and Genius 
press forward to conquest and glory, without bestowing 
a smile on the humble drudge that facilitates their 

15 progress. Every other author may aspire to praise ; 
the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, 
and even this negative recompense has been yet granted 
to very few. 

I have, notwithstanding this discouragement, at- 

20 tempted a Dictionary of the English Language, which, 
while it was employed in the cultivation of every species 
of literature, has itself been hitherto neglected; suffered 
to spread, under the direction of chance, into wild 
exuberance; resigned to the tyranny of time and 

25 fashion ; and exposed to the corruptions of ignorance, 
and caprices of innovation. 

When I took the first survey of my undertaking, I 
found our speech copious without order, and energetic 
without rule: wherever I turned my view, there was 

30 perplexity to be disentangled and confusion to be regu- 

29 



30 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

lated; choice was to be made out of boundless variety, 
without any established principle of selection; adultera- 
tions were to be detected, without a settled test of pur- 
ity; and modes of expression to be rejected or received, 
without the suffrages of any writers of classical reputa- 5 
tion or acknowledged authority. 

Having therefore no assistance but from general gram- 
mar, I applied myself to the perusal of our writers; 
and noting whatever might be of use to ascertain or 
illustrate any word or phrase, accumulated in time the 10 
materials of a dictionary, which, by degrees, I reduced 
to method, establishing to myself, in the progress of 
the work, such rules as experience and analogy sug- 
gested to me; experience, which practice and observa- 
tion were continually increasing; and analogy, which, 15 
though in some words obscure, was evident in others. 

In adjusting the Orthography, which has been to 
this time unsettled and fortuitous, I found it necessary 
to distinguish those irregularities that are inherent in 
our tongue, and perhaps coeval with it, from others 20 
which the ignorance or negligence of later writers has 
produced. Every language has its anomalies, which 
though inconvenient, and in themselves once unnecessary, 
must be tolerated among ' the imperfections of human 
things, and which require only to be registered, that 25 
they may not be increased ; and ascertained, that they 
may not be confounded: but every language has 
likewise its improprieties and absurdities, which 
it is the duty of the lexicographer to correct or 
proscribe. 30 

As language- was at its beginning merely oral, all 
words of necessary or common use were spoken before 
they were written; and while they were unfixed by any 
visible signs, must have been spoken with great diversity, 
as we now observe those who cannot read to catch 35 
sounds imperfectly, and utter them negligently. When 
this wild and barbarous jargon was first reduced to 




Johnson in a tie-wig, by Reynolds. 



PEE FACE TO THE ENGLISH DICTIOXARY 31 

an alphabet, every penman endeavored to express, as 
be could, tbe sounds which be was accustomed to pro- 
nounce or to receive, and vitiated in writing such words 
as were already vitiated in speech. Tbe powers of the 
5 letters, when they were applied to a new language, 
must have been vague and unsettled, and therefore dif- 
ferent hands would exhibit the same sound by different 
combinations. 

From this uncertain pronunciation arise in a great 

10 part the various dialects of the same country, which 
will always be observed to grow fewer, and less differ- 
ent, as books are multiplied; and from this arbitrary 
representation of sounds by letters proceeds that diver- 
sity of spelling observable in the Saxon remains, and 

15 1 suppose in the first books of every nation, which 
perplexes or destroys analogy, and produces anomalous 
formations, which, being once incorporated, can never 
be afterward dismissed or reformed. 

Of this kind are the derivatives length from long. 

20 strength from strong, darling from dear, breadth from 
broad, from dry, drought, and from high, height, which 
Milton, in zeal for analogy, writes highth. i Quid te 
exempta jnvat spinis de pluribus una I ' To change all 
would be too much, and to change one is nothing. 

25 This uncertainty is most frequent in the vowels, which 
are so capriciously pronounced, and so differently modi- 
fied, by accident or affectation, not only in every prov- 
ince, but in every mouth, that to them, as is well known 
to etymologists, little regard is to be shown in the 

30 deduction of one language from another. 

Such defects are not errors in orthography, but spots 
of barbarity impressed so deep in the English language, 
that criticism can never wash them away: these, there- 
fore, must be permitted to remain untouched; but many 

35 words have likewise been altered by accident, or de- 
praved by ignorance, as the pronunciation of the vulgar 
has been weakly followed; and some still continue to 



i 



32 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

be variously written, as authors differ in their care 
or skill: of these it was proper to inquire the true 
orthography, which I have always considered as depend- 
ing on their derivation, and have therefore referred them 
to their original languages ; thus I write enchant, en- 5 
chantment, enchanter, after the French, and incantation 
after the Latin; thus entire is chosen rather than intire, 
because it passed to us not from the Latin integer, but 
from the French entier. 

Of many words it is difficult to say whether they 10 
were immediately received from the Latin or the French, 
since at the time when we had dominions in France, 
we had Latin service in our churches. It is, hoAvever, 
my opinion that the French generally supplied us; 
for Ave have f eAv Latin words, among the terms of do- 15 
mestic use, which are not French; but many French, 
which are very remote from Latin. 

Even in words of which the derivation is apparent, 
I have been often obliged to sacrifice uniformity to 
custom ; thus I write, in compliance with a numberless 20 
majority, convey said inveigh, deceit and receipt, fancy 
and phantom; sometimes the derivative varies from the 
primitive, as explain and explanation, repeat and repeti- 
tion. 

Some combinations of letters having the same power, 25 
are used indifferently without any discoA T erable reason 
of choice, as in .choak, choke; soap, sope; feivel, fuel, 
and many others; which I haA T e sometimes inserted twice, 
that those Avho search for them under either form, may 
not search in vain. 30 

In examining the orthography of any doubtful word, 
the mode of spelling by which it is inserted in the series 
of the dictionary, is to be considered as that to which 
I give, perhaps not often rashly, the preference. I 
have left, in the examples, to every author his own 35 
practice unmolested, that the reader may balance suf- 
frages, and judge between us: but this question is not 



PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY 33 

always to be determined by reputed or by real learning; 
some men, intent upon greater things, have thought 
little on sounds and derivations; some, knowing in the 
ancient tongues, have neglected those in which our words 
5 are commonly to be sought. Thus Hammond writes- 
fecibleness for feasibleness, because I suppose he 
imagined it derived immediately from the Latin; and 
some words, such as dependant, dependent; dependance, 
dependence, vary their final syllable, as one or other 

10 language is present to the writer. 

In this part of the work, where caprice has long 
wantoned without control, and vanity sought praise by 
petty reformation, I have endeavored to proceed with 
a scholar's reverence for antiquity, and a grammarian's 

15 regard to the genius of our tongue. I have attempted 
few alterations, and among those few, perhaps the 
greater part is from the modern to the ancient practice; 
and I hope I may be allowed to recommend to those, 
whose thoughts have been perhaps employed too 

20 anxiously on verbal singularities, not to disturb, upon 
narrow views, or for minute propriety, the orthography 
of their fathers. It has been asserted, that for the law 
to be known, is of more importance than to be right. 
' Change/ says Hooker, ' is not made without ineon- 

25 venience, even from worse to better/ There is in con- 
stancy and stability a general and lasting advantage, 
which will always overbalance the slow improvements 
of gradual correction. Much less ought our written lan- 
guage to comply with the corruptions of oral utterance, 

30 or copy that which every variation of time or place 
makes different from itself, and imitate those changes, 
which will again be changed, while imitation is employed 
in observing them. 

This recommendation of steadiness and uniformity 

35 does not proceed from an opinion that particular com- 
binations of letters have much influence on human happi- 
ness; or that truth may not be successfully taught by 



34 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

modes of spelling fanciful and erroneous; I am not 
yet so lost in lexicography as to forget that i words are 
the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons 
of heaven.' Language is only the instrument of science, 
and words are but the signs of ideas : I wish, however, 5 
that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and 
that signs might be permanent, like the things which 
they denote. 

In settling the orthography, I have not wholly neg- 
lected the pronunciation, which I have directed, by 10 
printing an accent upon the acute or elevated syllable. 
It will sometimes be found that the accent is placed 
by the author quoted, on a different syllable from that 
marked in the alphabetical series; it is then to be under- 
stood, that custom has varied, or that the author has, 15 
in my opinion, pronounced wrong. Short directions 
are sometimes given where the sound of letters is ir- 
regular; and if they are sometimes omitted, defect in 
such minute observations will be more easily excused, 
than superfluity. 20 

In the investigation both of the orthography and 
signification of w T ords, their Etymology was necessarily 
to be considered, and they were therefore to be divided 
into primitives and derivatives. A primitive word is 
that which can be traced no further to any English 25 
root; thus circumspect, circumvent, circumstance, delude, 
concave, and complicate, though compounds in the Latin, 
are to us primitives. Derivatives, are all those that 
can be referred to any word in English of greater sim- 
plicity. 30 

The derivatives I have referred to their primitives, 
with an accuracy sometimes needless ; for who does 
not see that remoteness comes from remote, lovely from 
love, concavity from concave, and demonstrative from 
demonstrate f But this grammatical exuberance the 35 
scheme of my work did not allow me to repress. It is 
of great importance, in examining the general fabric 



PREFACE TO THE EXGLISH DICTIONARY 35 

of a language, to trace one word from another, by noting 
the usual modes of derivation and inflection; and uni- 
formity must be preserved in systematical works; though 
sometimes at the expense of particular propriety. 
5 Among other derivatives I have been careful to in- 
sert and elucidate the anomalous plurals of nouns and 
preterites of verbs, which in the Teutonic dialects are 
very frequent, and, though familiar to those who have 
always used them, interrupt and embarrass the learners 

10 of our language. 

The two languages from which our primitives have 
been derived, are the Roman and Teutonic : under the 
Roman, I comprehend the French and provincial 
tongues; and under the Teutonic, range the Saxon, Ger- 

15 man, and all their kindred dialects. Most of our poly- 
syllables are Roman, and our words of one syllable 
are very often Teutonic. 

In assigning the Roman original, it has perhaps some- 
times happened that I have mentioned only the Latin, 

20 when the word was borrowed from the French; and 
considering myself as employed only in the illustration 
of my own language, I have not been very careful to 
observe whether the Latin would be pure or barbarous, 
or the French elegant or obsolete. 

25 For the Teutonic etymologies, I am commonly in- 
debted to Junius and Skinner, the only names which 
I have forborne to quote when I copied their books; 
not that I might appropriate their labors or usurp 
their honors, but that I might spare a perpetual repe- 

30 tition by one general acknowledgment. Of these, whom 
I ought not to mention but with the reverence due to 
instructors and benefactors, Junius appears to have ex- 
celled in extent of learning, and Skinner in rectitude 
of understanding. Junius was accurately skilled in all 
1 35 the northern languages, Skinner probably examined the 
ancient and remoter dialects only by occasional inspec- 
tion into dictionaries; but the learning of Junius is 



36 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

often of no other use than to show him a track by 
which he may deviate from his purpose, to which Skin- 
ner always presses forward by the shortest way. Skin- 
ner is often ignorant, but never ridiculous: Junius is 
always full of knowledge ; but his variety distracts his 5 
judgment, and his learning is very frequently disgraced 
by his absurdities. 

The votaries of the northern muses will not perhaps 
easily restrain their indignation, when they find the 
name of Junius thus degraded by a disadvantageous 10 
comparison; but whatever reverence is due to his dili- 
gence, or his attainments, it can be no criminal degree 
,of censoriousness to charge that etymologist with want 
of judgment, who can seriously derive dream from 
drama, because ' life is a drama and a drama is a dream ' ; 15 
and who declares with a tone of defiance, that no man 
can fail to derive moan from fiovog, monos, single or 
solitary, who considers that grief naturally loves to be 
alone. 

Our knowledge of the northern literature is so scanty, 20 
that of words undoubtedly Teutonic, the original is not 
always to be found in any ancient language; and I 
have therefore inserted Dutch or German substitutes, 
which I consider not as radical, but parallel, not as 
the parents, but sisters of the English. 25 

The words which are represented as thus related by 
descent or cognation, do not always agree in sense; 
for it is incident to words, as to their authors, to de- 
generate from their ancestors, and to change their man- 
ners when they change their country. It is sufficient, 30 
in etymological inquiries, if the senses of kindred words 
be found such as may easily pass into each other, or 
such as may both be referred to one general idea. 

The etymology, so far as it is yet known, was easily 
found in the volumes, where it is particularly and pro- 35 
fessedly delivered; and, by proper attention to the rules 
of derivation, the orthography was soon adjusted. But 



PREFACE TO THE EXGLISE DICTIONARY 37 

to collect the words of our language was a task 
of greater difficulty : the deficiency of dictionaries was 
immediately apparent; and when they were exhausted, 
what was yet wanting must be sought by fortuitous 
5 and unguided excursions into books, and gleaned as in- 
dustry should find, or chance should offer it, in the 
boundless chaos of a living speech. My search, how- 
ever, has been either skilful or lucky; for I have much 
augmented the vocabulary. 

10 As my design was a dictionary, common or appel- 
lative, I have omitted all words which have relation to 
proper names; such as Avian, Socinian, Calvinist, Bene- 
dictine, Mahometan; but have retained those of a more 
general nature, as Heathen, Pagan. 

15 Of the terms of art I have received such as could 
be found either in books of science or technical dic- 
tionaries; and have often inserted, from philosophical 
writers, words which are supported perhaps only by a 
single authority, and which, being not admitted into gen- 

20eral use, stand yet as candidates or probationers, and 
must depend for their adoption on the suffrage of fu- 
turity. The words which our authors have introduced 
by their knowledge of foreign languages, or ignorance 
of their own, by vanity or wantonness, by compliance 

25 with fashion or lust of innovation, I have registered as 
they occurred, though commonly only to censure them, 
and warn others against the folly of naturalizing useless 
foreigners to the injury of the natives. 

I have not rejected any by design, merely because 

30 they were unnecessary or exuberant; but have received 
those which by different writers have been differently 
formed, as viscid, and viscidity, viscous, and viscosity. 

Compounded or double words I have seldom noted, 
except when they obtain a signification different from 

>5 that which the components have in their simple state. 
Thus highwayman, woodman, and horsecourser, require 
an explanation; but of thieflike, or coach d river, no no- 



38 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

tice was needed, because the primitives contain the mean- 
ing of the compounds. 

Words arbitrarily formed by a constant and settled 
analogy, like diminutive adjectives in ish, as greenish, 
bluish; adverbs in ly, as dully, openly; substantives in 5 
ness, as vileness, faultiness; were less diligently sought, 
and many sometimes have been omitted, when I had no 
authority that invited me to insert them; not that 
they are not genuine, and regular offsprings of English 
roots, but because their relation to the primitive being 10 
always the same, their signification cannot be mis- 
taken. 

- The verbal nouns in ing, such as the keeping of the 
castle, the leading of the army, are always neglected, 
or placed only to illustrate the sense of the verb, ex- 15 
cept when they signify things as well as actions, and 
have therefore a plural number, as dwelling, living; or 
have an absolute and abstract signification, as coloring, 
painting, learning. 

The participles are likewise omitted, unless, by sig- 20 
nlfying rather habit or quality than action, they take 
the nature of adjectives; as a thinking man, a man of 
prudence; a pacing horse, a horse that can pace: 
these I have ventured to call' participial adjectives. But 
neither are these always inserted, because they are com- 25 
monly to be understood without any danger of mistake, 
by consulting the verb. 

Obsolete words are admitted when they are found in 
authors not obsolete, or when they have any force or 
beauty that may deserve revival. 30 

As composition is one of the chief characteristics of 
a language, I have endeavored to make some reparation 
for the universal negligence of my predecessors, by 
inserting great numbers of compounded words, as may 
be found under after, fere, new, night, fair, and many 35 
more. These, numerous as they are, might be multiplied, 
but that use and curiosity are here satisfied, and the 



PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY 39 

frame of our language and modes of our combination 
amply discovered. 

Of some forms of composition, such as that by which 
re is prefixed to note repetition, and un to signify con- 
5 trariety or privation, all the examples cannot be ac- 
cumulated, because the use of these particles, if not 
wholly arbitrary, is so little limited, that they are hourly 
affixed to new words as occasion requires, or is imagined 
to require them. 

10 There is another kind of composition more frequent 
in our language than perhaps hi any other, from which 
arises to foreigners the greatest difficulty. We modify 
the signification of many verbs by a particle subjoined; 
as to come off, to escape by a fetch; to fall on, to attack;- 

15 to fall off, to apostatize; to break off, to stop abruptly; 
to bear out, to justify; to fall in, to comply; to give 
over, to cease; to set off, to embellish; to set in, to 
begin a continual tenor; to set out, to begin a course 
or journey; to take off, to copy; with innumerable ex- 

20 pressions of the same kind, of which some appear wildly 
irregular, being so far distant from the sense of the 
simple words, that no sagacity will be able to trace 
the seeps by which they arrived at the present use. 
These I have noted with great care; and though I can- 

25 not flatter myself that the collection is complete, I be- 
lieve I have so far assisted the students of our language 
that this kind of phraseology will be no longer insupera- 
ble; and the combinations of verbs and particles, by 
chance omitted, will be easily explained by comparison 

30 with those that may be found. 

Many words yet stand supported only by the name 
of Bailey, Ainsworth, Philips, or the contracted Diet. 
for Dictionaries, subjoined; of these I am not always 
certain that they are read in any book but the works 

35 of lexicographers. Of such I have omitted many, be- 
cause I had never read them; and many I have inserted, 
because they may perhaps exist, though they have 



40 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

escaped my notice: they are, however, to be yet con- 
sidered as resting only upon the credit of former dic- 
tionaries. Others, which I considered as useful, or know 
to he proper, though I could not at present support 
them by authorities, I have suffered to stand upon my 5 
own attestation, claiming the same privilege with my 
predecessors, of being sometimes credited without proof. 

The words, thus selected and disposed, are gram- 
matically considered; they are referred to the different 
parts of speech; traced when they are irregularly in- 10 
fleeted, through their various terminations ; and illustrated 
by observations, not indeed of great or striking im- 
portance, separately considered, but necessary to the 
elucidation of our language, and hitherto neglected or 
forgotten by English grammarians. 15 

That part of my work on which I expect malignity 
most frequently to fasten, is the explanation; in which 
I cannot hope to satisfy those, w T ho are perhaps not 
inclined to be pleased, since I have not always been 
able to satisfy myself. To interpret a language by it- 20 
self is very difficult; many words cannot be explained 
by synonimes, because the idea signified by them has 
not more than one appellation; nor by paraphrase, be- 
cause simple ideas cannot ' be described. When the 
nature of things is unknown, or the notion unsettled 25 
and indefinite, and various in various minds, the words 
by which such notions are conveyed, or such things 
denoted, will be ambiguous and perplexed. And such 
is the fate of hapless lexicography, that not only dark- 
ness, but light, impedes and distresses it; things may 30 
be not only too little, but too much known, to be happily 
illustrated. To explain, requires the use of terms less 
abstruse than that which is to be explained, and such 
terms cannot always be found; for as nothing can be 
proved but by supposing something intuitively known, 35 
and evident without proof, so nothing can be defined 
but by the use of words too plain to admit a definition. 



PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH DICTIOXABY 41 

Other words there are, of which the sense is too subtle 
and evanescent to he fixed in a paraphrase; such are 
all those which are by the grammarians termed exple- 
tives, and, in dead languages, are suffered to pass for 
5 empty sounds, of no other use than to fill a verse, or 
to modulate a period, but which are easily perceived hi 
living tongues to have power and emphasis, though it 
be sometimes such as no other form of expression can 
convey. 

10 My labor has likewise been much increased by a class 
of verbs too frequent in the English language, of which 
the signification is so loose and general, the use so 
vague and indeterminate, and the senses detorted so 
widely from the first idea, that it is hard to trace them 

15 through the maze of variation, to catch them on the 
brink of utter inanity, to circumscribe them by any limi- 
tations, or interpret them by any words of distinct and 
settled meaning; such are bear, break, come, cast, full, 
get, give, do, put, set, go, run, make, take, turn, throw. 

20 If of these the whole power is not accurately delivered, 
it must be remembered, that while our language is yet 
living, and variable by the caprice of every one that 
speaks it, these words are hourly shifting their rela- 
tions, and can no more be ascertained in a dictionary, 

25 than a grove, in the agitation of a storm, can be ac- 
curately delineated from its picture in the water. 

The particles are among all nations applied with so 
great latitude, that they are not easily reducible under 
any regular scheme of explication : this difficulty is 

30 not less, nor perhaps greater, in English, than in other 
languages. I have labored them with diligence, I hope 
with success; such at least as can be expected in a 
task, which no man, however learned or sagacious, has 
yet been able to perform. 

35 Some words there are which I cannot explain, because 
I do not understand them; these might have been omitted 
very often with little inconvenience, but I would not 



42 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

so far indulge my vanity as to decline this confession : 
for when Tully owns himself ignorant whether lessus, 
in the twelve tables, means a funeral song, or mourning 
garment; and Aristotle doubts whether ovpevg in the 
Iliad signifies a mule, or muleteer, I may surely with- 5 
out shame, leave some obscurities to happier industry, 
or future information. 

The rigor of interpretative lexicography requires that 
the explanation, and the word explained should he. al- 
ways reciprocal; this I have always endeavored, but 10 
could not always attain. Words are seldom exactly 
synonymous; a new term was not introduced, but be- 
cause the former was thought inadequate: names, there- 
fore, have often many ideas, but few ideas have 
many names. It was then necessary to use the proxi- 15 
mate word, for the deficiency of single terms can very 
seldom be supplied by circumlocution; nor is the in- 
convenience great of such mutilated interpretations, be- 
cause the sense may easily be collected entire from the 
examples. 20 

In every word of extensive use, it was requisite to 
mark the progress of its meaning, and show by what 
gradations of intermediate sense it has passed from its 
primitive to its remote and accidental signification; so 
that every foregoing explanation should tend to that 25 
which follows, and the series be regularly concatenated 
from the first notion to the last. 

This is specious, but not always practicable; kindred 
senses may be so interwoven, that the perplexity cannot 
be disentangled, nor any reason be assigned why one 30 
should be ranged before the other. When the radical 
idea branches out into parallel ramifications, how can 
a consecutive series be formed of senses in their nature 
collateral? The shades of meaning sometimes pass im- 
perceptibly into each other, so that though on one side 35 
they apparently differ, yet it is impossible to mark the 
point of contact. Ideas of the same race, though not 



PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY 43 

exactly alike, are sometimes so little different, that 
no words can express the dissimilitude, though the mind 
easily perceives it when they are exhibited together; 
and sometimes there is such a confusion of acceptations, 
5 that discernment is wearied and distinction puzzled, and 
perseverance herself hurries to an end, by crowding 
together what she cannot separate. 

These complaints of difficulty will, by those that 
have never considered words beyond their popular use, 

10 be thought only the jargon of a man willing to mag- 
nify his labors, and procure veneration to his studies 
by involution and obscurity. But every art is obscure 
to those that have not learned it; this uncertainty of 
terms, and commixture of ideas, is well known to those 

15 who have joined philosophy with grammar; and if I 
have not expressed them very clearly, it must be remem- 
bered that I am speaking of that which words are in- 
sufficient to explain. 

The original sense of words is often driven out of 

20 use by their metaphorical acceptations, yet must be 
inserted for the sake of a regular origination. Thus 
I know not whether ardor is used for material heat, or 
whether flagrant, in English, ever signifies the same with 
burning ; yet such are the primitive ideas of these words, 

25 which are therefore set first, though without exam- 
ples, that the figurative senses may be com m odiously 
deduced. 

Such is the exuberance of signification which many 
words have obtained, that it was scarcely possible to 

30 collect all their senses ; sometimes the meaning of deriva- 
tives must be sought in the mother term, and some- 
times deficient explanations of the primitive may be 
supplied in the train of derivation. In any case of 
doubt or difficulty, it will be always proper to examine 

35 all the words of the same race ; for some words are 
slightly passed over to avoid repetition, some admitted 
easier and clearer explanation than others, and all will 



44 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

be better understood, as they are considered in greater 
variety of structures and relations. 

; All the interpretations of words are not written with 
the same skill, or the same happiness: things equally 
easy in themselves, are not all equally easy to any 5 
single mind. Every writer of a long work commits 
errors, where there appears neither ambiguity to mis- 
lead, nor obscurity to confound him; and in a search 
like this, many felicities of expression will be casually 
overlooked, many convenient parallels will be forgotten, 10 
and many particulars will admit improvement from a 
mind utterly unequal to the whole performance. 

But many seeming faults are to be imputed rather 
to the nature of the undertaking, than the negligence 
of the performer. Thus some explanations are una void- 15 
ably reciprocal or circular, as hind, the female of the 
stag ; stag, the male of the hind : sometimes easier 
words are changed into harder, as burial into sepulture, 
or interment, drier into desiccative, dryness into siccity 
or aridity, fit into paroxysm ; for the easiest word, what- 20 
ever it be, can never be translated into one more easy. 
But easiness and difficulty are merely relative; and if 
the present prevalence of our language should invite for- 
eigners to this Dictionary, many will be assisted by 
those words which now seem only to increase or produce 2a 
obscurity. For this reason I have endeavored frequently 
to join a Teutonic and Roman interpretation, as to 
cheer, to gladden or exhilarate, that every learner of 
English may be assisted by his own tongue. 

The solution of all difficulties, and the supply of all 30 
defects must be sought in the examples, subjoined to 
the various senses of each word, and ranged according 
to the time of their authors. 

When I first collected these authorities, I was de- 
sirous that every quotation should be useful to some 35 
other end than the illustration of a word; I therefore 
extracted from philosophers principles of science; from 



PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY 45 

historians remarkable facts; from chvmists complete 
processes; from divines striking exhortations; and from 
poets beautiful descriptions. Such is design, while it 
is yet at a distance from execution. When the time 
5 called upon me to range this accumulation of elegance 
and wisdom into an alphabetical series. I soon discovered 
that the bulk of my volumes would fright away the 
student, and was forced to depart from my scheme of 
including all that was pleasing or useful in English 

10 literature, and reduce my transcripts very often to 
clusters of words, in which scarcely any meaning is 
retained ; thus to the weariness of copying, I was con- 
demned to add the vexation of expunging. Some pas- 
sages I have yet spared, which may relieve the labor 

15 of verbal searches, and intersperse with verdure and 
flowers the dusty desarts of barren philology. 

The examples, thus mutilated, are no longer to be 
considered as conveying the sentiments or doctrine of 
their authors; the word for the sake of which they are 

20 inserted, with all its appendant clauses, has been care- 
fully preserved: but it may sometimes happen, by hasty 
detruncation, that the general tendency of the sentence 
may be changed : the divine may desert his tenets, or the 
philosopher his system. 

25 Some of the examples have been taken from writers 
who were never mentioned as masters of elegance, or 
models of style; but words must be sought where they 
are used; and in what pages, eminent for purity, can 
terms of manufacture or agriculture be found? Many 

30 quotations serve no other purpose than that of proving 
the bare existence of words, and are therefore selected 
with less scrupulousness than those which are to teach 
their structures and relations. 

My purpose was to admit no testimony of living 

35 authors, that I might not be misled by partiality, and that 
none of my contemporaries might have reason to com- 
plain; nor have I departed from this resolution, but 



46 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

when some performance of uncommon excellence ex- 
cited my veneration, when my memory supplied me, 
from late books, with an example that was wanting, or 
when my heart, in the tenderness of friendship, solicited 
admission for a favorite name. 5 

So far have I been from any care to grace my pages 
with modern decorations, that I have studiously en- 
deavored to collect examples and authorities from the 
writers before the Restoration, whose works I regard 
as the i wells of English undefiled/ as the pure sources 10 
of genuine diction. Our language, for almost a cen- 
tury, has, by the concurrence of many causes, been 
gradually departing from its original Teutonic charac- 
ter, and deviating towards a Gallic structure and phrase- 
ology, from which it ought to be our endeavor to recall 15 
it, by making our ancient volumes the ground-work of 
style, admitting among the additions of later times, only 
such as may supply real deficiencies, such as are readily 
adopted by the genius of our tongue, and incorporate 
easily with our native idioms. 20 

But as every language has a time of rudeness ante- 
cedent to perfection, as well as of false refinement and 
declension, I have been cautious lest my zeal for an- 
tiqirty might drive me into times too remote, and crowd 
my book with words now no longer understood. I have 25 
fixed Sidney's work for the boundary, beyond which 
I make few excursions. From the authors which rose 
in the time of Elizabeth, a speech might be formed 
adequate to all the purposes of use and elegance. If 
the language of theology were extracted from Hooker 30 
and the translation of the Bible; the terms of natural 
knowledge from Bacon ; the phrases of policy, war, and 
navigation from Raleigh; the dialect of poetry and 
fiction from Spenser and Sidney; and the diction of 
common life from Shakespeare, few ideas would be lost 35 
to mankind, for want of English words in which they 
might be expressed. 



PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY 47 

It is not sufficient that a word is found, unless it be 
so combined as that its meaning is apparently deter- 
mined by the tract and tenor of the sentence; such 
passages I have therefore chosen, and when it hap- 
5 pened that any author gave a definition of a term, or 
such an explanation as is equivalent to a definition, I 
have placed his authority as a supplement to my own, 
without regard to the chronological order that is other- 
wise observed. 

10 Some words, indeed, stand unsupported by any au- 
thority, but they are commonly derivative nouns or 
adverbs, formed from their primitives by regular and 
constant analogy, or names of things seldom occurring 
in books, or words of which I have reason to doubt the 

15 existence. 

There is more danger of censure from the multiplicity 
than paucity of examples; authorities will sometimes 
seem to have been accumulated without necessity or use, 
and perhaps some will be found, which might, without 

20 loss, have been omitted. But a work of this kind is not 
hastily to be charged with superfluities; those quotations, 
which to careless or unskillful perusers appear only 
to repeat the same sense, will often exhibit, to a more 
accurate examiner, diversities of signification, or : - at 

25 least, afford different shades of the same meaning: one 
will show the word applied to persons, another to things; 
one will express an ill, another a good, and a third 
a neutral sense; one will prove the expression genuine 
from an ancient author; another will show it elegant 

30 from a modern : a doubtful authority is corroborated by 
another of more credit; an ambiguous sentence is ascer- 
tained by a passage clear and determinate : the word, 
how often soever repeated, appears with new associates 
and in different combinations, and every quotation con- 

35 tributes something to the stability or enlargement of the 
language. 

When words are used equivocally, I receive them in 



48 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

either sense; when they are metaphorical, I adopt them 
in their primitive acceptation. 

I have sometimes, though rarely, yielded to the temp- 
tation of exhibiting a genealogy of sentiments, by show- 
ing how one author copied the thoughts and diction of 5 
another: such quotations are indeed little more than 
repetitions, which might justly be censured, did they 
not gratify the mind, by affording a kind of intellectual 
history. 

The various syntactical structures occurring in the 10 
examples have been carefully noted; the license or negli- 
gence with which many words have been hitherto used, 
has made our style capricious and indeterminate; when 
the different combinations of the same word are ex- 
hibited together, the preference is readily given to 15 
propriety, and I have often endeavored to direct the 
choice. 

Thus have I labored by settling the orthography, 
displaying the a'nalogy, regulating the structures, and 
ascertaining the signification of English words, to per- 20 
form all the parts of a faithful lexicographer: but I 
have not always executed my own scheme, or satisfied 
my own expectations. The work, whatever proofs of 
diligence and attention it may exhibit, is yet capable of 
many improvements : the orthography which I recom- 25 
mend is still controvertible; the etymology which I 
adopt is uncertain, and perhaps frequently erroneous; 
the explanations are sometimes too much contracted, 
and sometimes too much diffused; the significations 
are distinguished rather with subtlety than skill, 30 
and the attention is harassed with unnecessary 
minuteness. 

The examples are too often injudiciously truncated, 
and perhaps sometimes — I hope very rarely — alleged in 
a mistaken sense ; for in making this collection I trusted 35 
more to memory, than, in a state of disquiet and em- 
barrassment, memory can contain, 2 nd purposed to sup- 



PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY 49 

ply at the review what was left incomplete in the first 
transcription. 

Many terms appropriated to particular occupations, 
though necessary and significant, are undoubtedly 
5 omitted; and of the words most studiously considered 
and exemplified, many senses have escaped observation. 
Yet these failures, however frequent, may admit ex- 
tenuation and apology. To have attempted much is 
always laudable, even when the enterprise is above the 

10 strength that undertakes it : to rest below his own aim 
is incident to every one whose fancy is active, and 
whose views are comprehensive; nor is any man satis- 
fied with himself because he has done much, but be- 
cause he can conceive little. When first I engaged in 

15 this work, I resolved to leave neither words nor things 
unexamined, and pleased myself with a prospect of the 
hours which I should revel away in feasts of literature, 
the obscure recesses of northern learning which I should 
enter and ransack, the treasures with which I expected 

20 every search into those neglected mines to reward my 
labor, and the triumph with which I should display 
my acqusitions to mankind. "When I had thus inquired 
into the original of words, I resolved to show likewise 
my attention to things; to pierce deep into every science, 

25 to inquire the nature of every substance of which I 
inserted the name, to limit every idea by a definition 
strictly logical, and exhibit every production of art 
or nature in an accurate description, that my book 
might be in place of all other dictionaries whether 

80 appellative or technical. But these were the dreams 
of a poet doomed at last to wake a lexicographer. I 
soon found that it is too late to look for instruments, 
when the work calls for execution, and that whatever 
abilities I had brought to my task, with those I must 

35 finally perform it. To deliberate whenever I doubted, 
to inquire whenever I was ignorant, would have pro- 
tracted the undertaking without end, and, perhaps, with- 



50 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

out much improvement; for I did not find by my first 
experiments, that what I had not of my own was easily 
to be obtained: I saw that one inquiry only gave occa- 
sion to another, that book referred to book, that to 
search was not always to find, and to find was not al- 5 
ways to be informed; and that thus to pursue perfection, 
was, like the first inhabitants of Arcadia, to chase the 
sun, which, when they had reached the hill where he 
seemed to rest, was still beheld at the same distance 
from them. - 10 

I then contracted my design, determining to confide 
in myself, and no longer to solicit auxiliaries which 
produced more incumbrance than assistance; by this I 
obtained at least one advantage, that I set limits to 
my work, which would in time be ended, though not 15 
completed. 

Despondency has never so far prevailed as to depress 
me to negligence; some faults will at last appear to 
be the effects of anxious diligence and persevering activ- 
ity. The nice and subtle ramifications of meaning were 20 
not easily avoided by a mind intent upon accuracy, and 
convinced of the necessity of disentangling combinations, 
and separating similitudes. Many of the distinctions 
which to common readers appear useless and idle, will 
be found real and important by men versed in the school 25 
philosophy, without which no dictionary can ever be 
accurately compiled, or skillfully examined. 

Some senses, however, there are, which, though not 
the same, are yet so nearly allied, that they are often 
confounded. Most men think indistinctly, and therefore 30 
cannot speak with exactness; and consequently some ex- 
amples might be indifferently put to either signification: 
this uncertainty is not to be imputed to me, who do 
not form, but register the language; who do not teach 
men how they should think, but relate how they have 35 
hitherto expressed their thoughts. 

The imperfect sense of some examples I lamented, 



PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY 51 

but could not remedy, and hope they will be compensated 
by innumerable passages selected with propriety, and pre- 
served with exactness; some shining with sparks of 
imagination, and some replete with treasures of wis- 
5dom. 

The orthography and etymology, though imperfect, 
are not imperfect for want of care, but because care 
will not always be successful, and recollection or in- 
formation come too late for use. 

10 That many terms of art and manufacture are omitted, 
must be frankly acknowledged; but for this defect I 
may boldly allege that it was unavoidable; I could not 
visit caverns to learn the miner's language, nor take a 
voyage to perfect my skill in the dialect of navigation, 

15 nor visit the warehouses of merchants, and shops of 
artificers, to gain the names of wares, tools, and opera- 
tions, of which no mention is found in books; what 
favorable accident or easy inquiry brought within my 
reach, has not been neglected; but it had been a hope- 

20 less labor to glean up words, by courting living in- 
formation, and contesting with the sullenness of one, 
and the roughness of another. 

To furnish the Academicians dell a Crusca with words 
of this kind, a series of comedies called La Fiera, or 

2o The Fair, was professedly written by Buonaroti; but 
I had no such assistant, and therefore was content to 
want what they must have wanted likewise, ' had they 
not luckily been so supplied. 

Nor are all words which are not found in the vocabu- 

30 lary, to be lamented as omissions. Of the laborious and 
mercantile part of the people, the diction is in a great 
measure casual and mutable; many of their terms are 
formed for some temporary or local convenience, and 
though current at certain times and places, are in others 

35 utterly unknown. This fugitive cant, which is always in 
a state of increase or decay, cannot be regarded as any 
part of the durable materials of a language, and there- 



52 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

fore must be suffered to perish with other things un- 
worthy of preservation. 

Care will sometimes betray to the appearance of negli- 
gence. He that is catching opportunities which seldom 
occur, will suffer those to pass by unregarded, which 5 
he expects hourly to return ; he that is searching for rare 
and remote things, will neglect those that are obvious 
and familiar: thus many of the most common and cur- 
sory words have been inserted with little illustration, 
because in gathering the authorities, I f orebore to copy 10 
those which I thought likely to occur whenever they 
were wanted. It is remarkable that, in reviewing my 
collection, I found the word sea unexemplified. 

Thus it happens, that in things difficult there is danger 
from ignorance, and in things easy, from confidence ; the 15 
mind, afraid of greatness, and disdainful of littleness, 
hastily withdraws herself from painful searches, and 
passes with scornful rapidity over tasks not adequate 
to her powers; sometimes too secure for caution, and 
again too anxious for vigorous effort ; sometimes idle in 20 
a plain path, and sometimes distracted in labyrinths, 
and dissipated by different intentions. 

A large work is difficult because it is large, even 
though all its parts might singly be performed with 
facility; where there are many things to be done, each 25 
must be allowed its share of time and labor, in the pro- 
portion only which it bears to the whole; nor can it 
be expected, that the stones which form the dome of 
a temple, should be squared and polished like the dia- 
mond of a ring. 30 

Of the event of this work, for which, having labored 
it with so much application, I cannot but have some 
degree of parental fondness, it is natural to form con- 
jectures. Those who have been persuaded to think well 
of my design, will require that it should fix our Ian- 35 
guage, and put a stop to those alterations which time 
and chance have hitherto been suffered to make in it 



PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY 53 

without opposition. With this consequence I will con- 
fess that I flattered myself for a while; but now begin 
to fear that I have indulged expectation which neither 
reason nor experience can justify. "When we see men 
5 grow old and die at a certain time one after another, 
from century to century, we laugh at the elixy that 
promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with 
equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who 
being able to produce no example of a nation that has 

10 preserved their words and phrases from mutability, shall 
imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, 
and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in 
his power to change sublunary nature, and clear the 
world at once from folly, vanity, and affectation. 

15 "With this hope, however, academies have been insti- 
tuted, to guard the avenues of their languages, to retain 
fugitives, and repulse intruders ; but their vigilance and 
activity have hitherto been vain; sounds are too volatile 
and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, 

20 and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of 
pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength. 
The French language has visibly changed under the 
inspection of the Academy; the style of Ainelot's trans- 
lation of Father Paul is observed by Le Courayer to be 

25 202 pen passe; and no Italian will maintain, that the 
diction of any modern writer is not perceptibly different 
from that of Boecace, Machiavel, or Caro. 

Total and sudden transformations of a language sel- 
dom happen; conquests and migrations are now very 

30 rare : but there are other causes of change, which, though 
slow in their operation, and invisible in their progress, 
are perhaps as much superior to human resistance, as 
the revolutions of the sky, or intumescence of the tide. 
Commerce, however necessary, however lucrative, as it 

35 depraves the manners, corrupts the language ; they that 
have frequent intercourse with strangers, to whom they 
endeavor to accommodate themselves, must in time learn 



54 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

a mingled dialect, like the jargon which serves the 
traffickers on the Mediterranean and Indian coasts. This 
will not always be confined to the exchange, the ware- 
house, or the port, but will be communicated by de- 
grees to other ranks of the people, and be at last in- 5 
corporated with the current speech. 

There are likewise internal causes equally forcible. 
The language most likely to continue long without altera- 
tions, would be that of a nation, raised a little, and but 
a little, above barbarity, secluded from strangers, and 10 
totally employed in procuring the conveniences of life; 
either without books, or, like some of the Mahometan 
countries, with very few : men thus busied and unlearned, 
having only such words as common use requires, would 
perhaps long continue to express the same notions by 15 
the same signs. But no such constancy can be ex- 
pected in a people polished by arts, and classed by 
subordination, where one part of the community is sus- 
tained and accommodated by the labor of the other. 
Those who have much leisure to think, will always be 20 
enlarging the stock of ideas; and every increase of 
knowledge, whether real or fancied, will produce new 
words, or combination of words. When the mind is 
unchained from necessity, it will range after conveni- 
ence ; when it is left at large in the fields of speculation, 25 
it will shift opinions; as any custom is disused, the 
words that expressed it must perish with it; as any 
opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the 
same proportion as it alters practice. 

As by the cultivation of various sciences a language 30 
is amplified, it will be more furnished with words de- 
flected from their original sense; the geometrician will 
talk of a courtier's zenith or the eccentric virtue of a 
wild hero, and the physician, of sanguine expectations 
and phlegmatic delays. Copiousness of speech will give 35 
opportunities to capricious choice, by which some words 
will be preferred, and others degraded: vicissitudes of 



PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY 55 

fashion will enforce the use of new, or extend the sig- 
nification of known terms. The tropes of poetry will 
make hourly encroachments, and the metaphorical will 
become the current sense: pronunciation will be varied 
5 by levity or ignorance, and the pen must at length com- 
ply with the tongue; illiterate writers will, at one time 
or other, by public infatuation, rise into renown, who, 
not knowing the original import of words, will use them 
with colloquial licentiousness, confound distinction, and 

10 forget propriety. As politeness increases, some expres- 
sions will be considered as too gross and vulgar for 
the delicate, others as too formal and ceremonious for 
the gay and airy; new phrases are therefore adopted, 
which must for the same reasons be in time dismissed. 

15 Swift, in his petty treatise on the English language, 
allows that new words must sometimes be introduced, 
but proposes that none should be suffered to become 
obsolete. But what makes a word obsolete, more than 
general agreement to forbear it? and how shall it be 

20 continued, when it conveys an offensive idea, or recalled 
again into the mouths of mankind, when it has once 
become unfamiliar by disuse, and unpleasing by un- 
f amiliarity ? 

There is another cause of alteration more prevalent 

25 than any other, which yet in the present state of the 
world cannot be obviated. A mixture of two languages 
will produce a third distinct from both, and they will 
always be mixed, where the chief parts of education, 
and the most conspicuous accomplishment, is skill in 

30 ancient or in foreign tongues. He that has long cul- 
tivated another language, will find its words and com- 
binations crowd upon his memory; and haste and negli- 
gence, refinement and affectation, will obtrude borrowed 
terms and exotic expressions. 

35 The great pest of speech is frequency of translation. 
No book was ever turned from one language into an- 
other, without imparting something of its native idiom j 



56 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

this is the most mischievous and comprehensive innova- 
tion; single words may enter by thousands, and the 
fabric of the tongue continue the same; but new phrase- 
ology changes much at once; it alters not the single 
stones of the building, but the order of the columns. 5 
If an academy should be established for the cultivation 
of our style — which I, who can never wish to see de- 
pendence multiplied, hope the spirit of English liberty 
will hinder or destroy — let them, instead of compiling 
grammars and dictionaries, endeavor, with all their in- 10 
fluence, to stop the license of translators, whose idle- 
ness and ignorance, if it be suffered to proceed, will 
reduce us to babble a dialect of France. 

If the changes that we fear be thus irresistible, what 
remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other 15 
insurmountable distresses of humanity? It remains that 
we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what 
we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though 
death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like gov- 
ernments, have a natural tendency to degeneration ; Ave 20 
have long preserved our constitution, let us make some 
struggles for our language. 

In hope of giving longevity to that which its own na- 
ture forbids to be immortal, I have devoted this book, 
the labor of years, to the honor of my country, that 25 
we may no longer yield the palm of philology, without 
a contest, to the nations of the continent. The chief 
glory of every people arises from its authors : whether 
I shall add any thing by my own writings to the reputa- 
tion of English literature, must be left to time: much 30 
of my life has been lost under the pressures of disease ; 
much has been trifled away; and much has always been 
spent in provision for the day that was passing over 
me; but I shall not think my employment useless or 
ignoble, if by my assistance foreign nations, and distant 35 
ages, gain access to the propagators of knowledge, and 
understand the teachers of truth; if my labors afford 



PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY 57 

light to the repositories of science, and add celebrity 
to Bacon, to Hooker, to Milton, and to Boyle. 

When I am animated by this wish, I look with pleas- 
ure on my book, however defective, and deliver it to 
5 the world with the spirit of a man that has endeavored 
well. That it will immediately become popular I have 
not promised to myself : a few wild blunders, and risible 
absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity 
was ever free, may for a time furnish folly with laugh- 

10 ter, and harden ignorance into contempt ; but useful dili- 
gence will at last prevail, and there never can be want- 
ing some who distinguish desert; who will consider that 
no dictionary of a living tongue ever can be perfect, 
since, while it is hastening to publication, some words 

15 are budding, and some falling away ; that a whole life 
cannot be spent upon syntax and etymology, and that 
even a whole life would not be sufficient; that he, whose 
design includes whatever language can express, must 
often speak of what he does not understand; that a 

20 writer will sometimes be hurried by eagerness to the end, 
and sometimes faint with weariness under a task which 
Scaliger compares to the labors of the anvil and the 
mine; that what is obvious is not always known, and 
what is known is not always present; that sudden fits 

25 of inadvertency will surprise vigilance, slight avocations 
will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of the mind will 
darken learning; and that the writer shall often in vain 
trace his memory at the moment of need, for that which 
yesterday he knew with intuitive readiness, and which 

30 will come uncalled into his thoughts to-morrow. 

In this work, when it shall be found that much is 
omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is 
performed; and though no book was ever spared out 
of tenderness to the author, and the world is little 

35 solicitous to know whence proceed the faults of that 
which it condemns; yet it may gratify curiosity to in- 
form it, that the English Dictionary was written with 



58 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

little assistance of the learned, and without any patron- 
age of the great ; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, 
or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst 
inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow. 
It may repress the triumph of malignant criticism to 5 
observe, that if our language is not here fully displayed, 
I have only failed in an attempt which no human powers 
have hitherto completed. If the lexicons of ancient 
tongues, now immutably fixed, and comprised in a few 
volumes, be yet, after the toil of successive ages, in- 10 
adequate and delusive; if the aggregated knowledge, and 
co-operating diligence of the Italian academicians; did 
not secure them from the censure of Beni; if the em- 
bodied critics of France, when fifty years had been 
spent upon their work, were obliged to change its econ- 15 
omy, and give their second edition another form, I may 
surely be contented without the praise of perfection, 
which, if I could obtain, in this gloom of solitude, what 
would it avail me? I have protracted my work till 
most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into 20 
the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty 
sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, 
having little to fear or hope from censure or from 
praise. 



PREFATORY XOTE OX THE RAMBLER 

Is 1750, while in the midst of his work on the Diction- 
ary, Johnson began to write a series of essays which he 
called The Rambler. As he entered upon his task he com- 
posed the following prayer: 

' Almighty God. the giver of all good things, without 
whose help all labor is ineffectual, and without whose 
grace all wisdom is folly; grant I beseech thee, that in 
this undertaking thy Holy Spirit may not be withheld 
from me, but that I may promote thy glory, and the sal- 
vation of myself and others; grant this, Lord, for the 
sake of thy Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.' 

For two years he wrote two essays a week, producing 
them with greatest rapidity, and often sending them to the 
press without reading them over. In the last essay he 
wrote : ' He that condemns himself to compose on a stated 
day, will often bring to his task an attention dissipated, 
a memory embarrassed, an imagination overwhelmed, a 
mind distracted with anxieties, a body languishing with 
disease; he will labor on a barren topic, till it is too late 
to change it; or, in the ardor of invention, diffuse his 
thoughts into wild exuberance, which the pressing hour 
of publication cannot suffer judgment to examine or re- 
duce.' 

Johnson intended that the essays should be anonymous, 
but the author was soon guessed. During the period of 
their first publication the essays were not popular, and 
the reason is obvious. But when afterwards collected and 
issued in bound volumes they gained steadily in fame 
through the rest of the century, and by 1791 had passed 
into twelve editions, exceeding in sale any other periodical, 
essay after the reign of Anne. 

The Rambler brought Johnson two of his warmest friends 
— Bennet Langton and Arthur Murphy — both of whom 

59 



60 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

found him living in untidy confusion. Ten years later 
Goldsmith's admiration of The Rambler was charmingly ex- 
pressed in his jeu d'esprit in the Stage-coach of Fame, in 
The Bee (No. 5). It was The Rambler, not the Dictionary 
which got Johnson his place in that vehicle. 



Zhc IRambler 

No. 4. Saturday ; March 31, 1750 

Simul et jucunda et idonca diccre liter. 

Hoe. Art of Poetry, 334. 

And join both profit and delight in one. — Creech. 

The works of fiction, with which the present genera- 
tion seems more particularly delighted, are such as ex- 
hibit life in its true state, diversified only by accidents 
that daily happen in the world, and influenced by pas- 
5sions and qualities which are really to be found in con- 
versing with mankind. 

This kind of writing may be termed, not improperly, 
the comedy of romance, and is to be conducted nearly 
by the rules of comic poetry. Its province is to bring 
10 about natural events by easy means, and to keep up 
curiosity without the help of wonder: it is therefore 
precluded from the machines and expedients of the 
heroic romance, and can neither employ giants to snatch 
away a lady from the nuptial rites, nor knights to 
15 brink her back from captivity; it can neither bewilder 
its personages in deserts, nor lodge them in imaginary 
castles. 

I remember a remark made by Scaliger upon Pon- 
tanus, that all his writings are filled with the same 
20 images; and that if you take from him his lilies and 
his roses, his satyrs and his dryads, he will have nothing 
left that can be called poetry. In like manner almost 
all the fictions of the last age will vanish, if you deprive 
them of a hermit and a wood, a battle and a shipwreck. 
Why this wild strain of imagination found reception 

61 



62 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

so long in polite and learned ages, it is not easy to 
conceive; but we cannot wonder that while readers could 
be procured, the authors were willing to continue it; 
for w T hen a man had by practice gained some fluency 
of language, he had no further care than to retire to 5 
his closet, let loose his invention, and heat his mind 
with incredibilities; a book was thus produced without 
fear of criticism, without the toil of study, without 
knowledge of nature, or acquaintance with life. 

The task of our present writers is very different; it 10 
requires, together with that learning which is to be 
gained from books, that experience which can never be 
attained by solitary diligence, but must arise from gen- 
eral converse and accurate observation of the living 
world. Their performances have, as Horace expresses 15 
it, i plus oneris quantum veniae minus/ little indulgence, 
and therefore more difficulty. They are engaged in 
portraits of which every one knows the original, and 
can detect any deviation from exactness of resemblance. 
Other writings are safe, except from the malice of learn- 20 
ing, but these are in danger from every common reader; 
as the slipper ill executed was censured by a shoemaker, 
who happened to stop in his way at the Venus of 
Apelles. 

But the fear of not being approved as just copiers 25 
of human manners, is not the most important concern 
that an author of this sort ought to have before him. 
These books are written chiefly to the young, the igno- 
rant, and the idle, to whom they serve as lectures of 
conduct, and introductions into life. They are the en- 30 
tertainment of minds unfurnished with ideas, and there- 
fore easily susceptible of impressions ; not fixed by 
principles, and therefore easily following the current 
of fancy; not informed by experience, and consequently 
open to every false suggestion and partial account. 35 

That the highest degree of reverence should be paid 
to youth, and that nothing indecent should be suffered 



THE EAMBLEB 63 

to approach their eyes or ears, are precepts extorted by 
sense and virtue from an ancient writer, by no means 
eminent for chastity of thought. The same kind, though 
not the same degree, of caution, is required in every- 
5 thing which is laid before them, to secure them from 
unjust prejudices, perverse opinions, and incongruous 
combinations of images. 

In the romances formerly written, every transaction 
and sentiment was so remote from all that passes among 

10 men, that the reader was in very little danger of mak- 
ing any applications to himself; the virtues and crimes 
were equally beyond his sphere of activity: and he 
amused himself with heroes and with traitors, deliverers 
and persecutors, as with beings of another species, whose 

15 actions were regulated upon motives of their own, and 
who had neither faults nor excellencies in common Avith 
himself. 

But when an adventurer is levelled with the rest 
of the world, and acts in such scenes of the universal 

20 drama, as may be the lot of any other man, young 
spectators fix their eyes upon him with closer attention, 
and hope, by observing his behavior and success, to 
regulate their own practices, when they shall be en- 
gaged in the like part. 

25 For this reason these familiar histories may perhaps 
be made of greater use than the solemnities of pro- 
fessed morality, and convey the knowledge of vice and 
virtue with more efficacy than axioms and definitions. 
But if the power of example is so great as to take 

30 possession of the memory by a kind of violence, and 
produce effects almost without the intervention of the 
will, care ought to be taken, that, when the choice is 
unrestrained, the best examples only should be exhibited; 
and that which is likely to operate so strongly, should 

35 not be mischievous or uncertain in its effects. 

The chief advantage which these fictions have over 
real life is, that their authors are at liberty, though not 



64 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

to invent, yet to select objects, and to cull from the 
mass of mankind, those individuals upon which the 
attention ought most to be employed; as a diamond, 
though it cannot be made, may be polished by art, and 
placed in such situation, as to display that lustre which 5 
before was buried among common stones. 

It is justly considered as the greatest excellency of 
art, to imitate nature; but it is necessary to distinguish 
those parts of nature, which are most proper for imi- 
tation : greater care is still required in representing life, 10 
which is so often discolored by passion, or deformed 
by wickedness. If the world be promiscuously described, 
I cannot see of what use it can be to read the account; 
or why it may not be as safe to turn the eye immediately 
upon mankind as upon a mirror which shows all that 15 
presents itself without discrimination. 

It is therefore not a sufficient vindication of a char- 
acter, that it is drawn as it appears; for many char- 
acters ought never to be drawn : nor of a narrative, 
that the train of events is agreeable to observation and 20 
experience; for that observation which is called know- 
ledge of the world, will be found much more frequently 
to make men cunning than good. The purpose of these 
writings is surely not only to show mankind, but to 
provide that they may be seen hereafter with less haz- 25 
ard; to teach the means of avoiding the snares which 
are laid by Treachery for Innocence, without infusing 
any wish for that superiority with which the betrayer 
flatters his vanity; to give the power of counteracting 
fraud, without the temptation to practise it ; to initiate 30 
youth by mock encounters in the art of necessary de- 
fense, and to increase prudence without impairing virtue. 

Many writers, for the sake of following nature, so 
mingle good and bad qualities in their principal per- 
sonages, that they are both equally conspicuous ; and 35 
as we accompany them through their adventures with 
delight, and are led by degrees to interest ourselves 



THE RAMBLER 65 

in their favor, we lose the abhorrence of their faults, 
because they do not hinder our pleasure, or perhaps, 
regard them with some kindness, for being united with 
so much merit. 
5 There have been men indeed splendidly wicked, whose 
endowments threw a brightness on their crimes, and 
whom scarce any villany made perfectly detestable, be- 
cause they never could be wholly divested of their ex- 
cellencies; but such have been in all ages the great 

10 corrupters of the world, and their resemblance ought no 
more to be preserved, than the art of murdering without 
pain. 

Some have advanced, without due attention to the 
consequence of this notion, that certain virtues have their 

15 correspondent faults, and therefore that to exhibit either 
apart is to deviate from probability. Thus men are 
observed by Swift to be i grateful in the same degree as 
they are resentful.' This principle, with others of the 
same kind, supposes man to act from a brute impulse, 

20 and pursue a certain degree of inclination, without any 
choice of the object; for, otherwise, though it should 
be allowed that gratitude and resentment arise from the 
same constitution of the passions, it follows not tha' 
they will be equally indulged when reasxtn^is consulted; 

25 yet, unless that consequence be admitted, this sagacious 
maxim becomes an empty sound, without any relation to 
practice or to life. 

Nor is it evident, that even the first motions to these 
effects are always in the same proportion. For pride, 

30 which produces quickness of resentment, will obstruct 
gratitude, by unwillingness to admit that inferiority 
which obligation implies; and it is very unlikely that 
he who cannot think he receives a favor, will acknow- 
ledge or repay it. 

35 It is of the utmost importance to mankind, that posi- 
tions of this tendency should be laid open and con- 
futed; for while men consider good and evil as spring- 



66 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

ing from the same root, they will spare the one for 
the sake of the other, and in judging, if not of others, 
at least of themselves, will be apt to estimate their 
virtues by their vices. To this fatal error all those 
will contribute, who confound the colors of right and 5 
wrong, and, instead of helping to settle their boundaries, 
mix them with so much art, that no common mind is 
able to disunite them. 

In narratives where historical veracity has no place, 
I cannot discover why there should not be exhibited the 1 
most perfect idea of virtue; of virtue not angelical, nor 
above probability, for what we cannot credit, we shall 
never imitate, but the highest and purest that humanity 
can reach, which, exercised in such trials as the various 
revolutions of things shall bring upon it, may, by con- 15 
quering some calamities, and enduring others, teach us 
what we may hope, and what we can perform. Vice, 
for vice is necessary to be shown, should always dis- 
gust; nor should the graces of gaiety, or the dignity 
of courage, be so united with it, as to reconcile it to 20 
the mind. Wherever it appears, it should raise hatred 
by the malignity of its practices, and contempt by the 
meanness of its stratagems : for while it is supported by 
either parts or spirit, it will be seldom heartily ab- 
horred. The Roman tyrant was content to be hated, 25 
if he was but feared; and there are thousands of the 
readers of romances willing to be thought wicked, if 
they may be allowed to be wits. It is therefore to be 
steadily inculcated, that virtue is the highest proof of 
understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness ; 30 
and that vice is the natural consequence of narrow 
thoughts ; that it begins in mistake, and ends in igno- 
miny. 



THE RAMBLER 67 



No. 5. Tuesday, April 3, 1750 

Et nunc omnis ager, nunc omnis parturit arbos,, 
Nunc frondent silvw, nunc formosissimus annus. 

Virg. Eel 3. 56, 7. 

Now ev'ry field, now ev'ry tree is green ; 

Now genial Nature's fairest face is seen. — Elphixstox. 

Every man is sufficiently discontented with some cir- 
cumstances of his present state, to suffer his imagina- 
tion to range more or less in quest of future happiness, 
and to fix upon some point of time, in which, by the 
5 removal of the inconvenience which now perplexes him, 
or acquisition of the advantage which he at present 
wants, he shall find the condition of his life very much 
improved. 

When this time, which is too often expected with 

10 great impatience, at last arrives, it generally comes with- 
out the blessing for which it was desired; but we solace 
ourselves with some new prospect, and press forward 
again with equal eagerness. 

It is lucky for a man in whom this temper prevails, 

15 when he turns his hopes upon things wholly out of his 
own power; since he forbears then to precipitate his 
affairs, for the sake of the great event that is to com- 
plete his felicity, and waits for the blissful hour with 
less neglect of the measures necessary to be taken in 

20 the meantime. 

I have long known a person of this temper, who 
indulged his dream of happiness with less hurt to him- 
self than such chimerical wishes commonly produce, 
and adjusted his scheme with such address, that his 

25 hopes were in full bloom three parts of the year, and 
in the other part never wholly blasted. Many, perhaps, 
would be desirous of learning by what means he pro- 
cured to himself such a cheap and lasting satisfaction. 
It was gained by a constant practice of referring the 
removal of all his uneasiness to the coming of the 



68 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

next spring; if his health was impaired, the spring 
would restore it; if what he wanted was at a high 
price, it would fall its value in the spring. 

The spring indeed did often come without any of 
these effects, but he was always certain that the next 5 
would be more propitious; nor was ever convinced, that 
the present spring would fail him before the middle 
of summer; for he always talked of the spring as com- 
ing till it was past, and when it was once past, every 
one agreed with him that it was coming. 10 

By long converse with this man, I am, perhaps, brought 
to feel immoderate pleasure in the contemplation of 
this delightful season ; but I have the satisfaction of 
finding many whom it can be no shame to resemble, 
infected with the same, enthusiasm; for there is, I be- 15 
lieve, scarce any poet of eminence, who has not left 
some testimony of his fondness for the flowers, the 
zephyrs, and the warblers of the spring. Nor has the 
most luxuriant imagination been able to describe the 
serenity and happiness of the golden age, otherwise 20 
than by giving a perpetual spring, as the highest reward 
of uncorrupted innocence. 

There is, indeed, something inexpressibly pleasing in 
the annual renovation^of the world, and the new display 
of the treasures of nature. ~The cold and darkness of 25 
winter, with the naked deformity of every object on 
which we turn our eyes, make us rejoice at the succeed- 
ing season, as well for what we have escaped, as for 
what we may enjoy; and every budding flower which 
a warm situation brings early to our view is considered 30 
by us as a messenger to notify the approach of more 
joyous days. 

The spring affords to a mind, so free from the dis- 
turbance of cares or passions as to be vacant to calm 
amusements, almost every thing that our present state 35 
makes us capable of enjoying. The variegated verdure 
of the fields and woods, the succession of grateful odors, 



THE RAMBLER 69 

the voice of pleasure pouring out its notes on every 
side, with the gladness apparently conceived by every 
animal, from the growth of his food, and the clemency 
of the weather, throw over the whole earth an air of 
5 gaiety, significantly expressed by the smile of nature. 
Yet there are men to whom these scenes are able to 
give no delight, and who hurry away from all the 
varieties of rural beauty, to lose their hours and divert 
their thoughts by cards or assemblies, a tavern dinner 

10 or the prattle of the day. 

It may be laid down as a position which will seldom 
deceive, that when a man cannot bear his own com- 
pany, there is something wrong. He must fly from 
himself, either because he feels a tediousness in life 

15 from the equipoise of an empty mind, which, having 
no tendency to one motion more than another, but as 
it is impelled by some external power, must always 
have recourse to foreign objects; or he must be afraid 
of the intrusion of some unpleasing ideas, and perhaps 

20 is struggling to escape from the remembrance of a 
loss, the fear of a calamity, or some other thought of 
greater horror. 

Those whom sorrow incapacitates to enjoy the pleas- 
ures of contemplation may properly apply to such 

25 diversions, provided they are innocent, as lay strong 
hold on the attention; and those whom fear of any 
future affliction chains down to misery must endeavor 
to obviate the danger. 

My considerations shall, on this occasion, be turned on 

30 such as are burdensome to themselves merely because 
they want subjects for reflection, and to whom the 
volume of nature is thrown open without affording them 
pleasure or instruction, because they never learned to 
read the characters. 

35 A French author has advanced this seeming paradox, 
that l very few men know how to take a walk ' ; and, 
indeed, it is true, that few know how to take a walk 



70 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

with a prospect of any other pleasure, than the same 
company would have afforded them at home. 

There are animals that borrow their color from the 
neighboring body, and consequently vary their hue as 
they happen to change their place. In like manner it 5 
ought to be the endeavor of every man to derive his 
reflections from the objects about him; for it is to no 
purpose that he alters his position, if his attention 
continues fixed to the same point. The mind should 
be kept open to the access of every new idea, and 10 
so far disengaged from the predominance of particular 
thoughts, as easily to accommodate itself to occasional 
entertainment. 

* A man that has formed this habit of turning every 
new object to his entertainment, finds in the productions 15 
of nature an inexhaustible stock of materials upon 
which he can employ himself, without any temptations 
to envy or malevolence; faults, perhaps, seldom totally 
avoided by those whose judgment is much exercised 
upon the works of art. He has always a certain pros- 20 
pect of discovering new reasons for adoring the sov- 
ereign Author of the universe, and probable hopes of 
making some discovery of benefit to others, or of profit 
to himself. There is no doubt but many vegetables and 
animals have qualities that might be of great use, to 25 
the knowledge of which there is not required much 
force of penetration or fatigue of study, but only fre- 
quent experiments and close attention. What is said 
by the chemists of their darling mercury, is, perhaps, 
true of every body through the whole creation, that, 30 
if a thousand lives should be spent upon it, all its 
properties would not be found out. 

Mankind must necessarily be diversified by various 
tastes, since life affords and requires such multiplicity 
of employments, and a nation of naturalists is neither 35 
to be hoped, nor desired; but it is surely not improper 
to point out a fresh amusement to those who languish 



THE RAMBLER 71 

in health, and repine in plenty, for want of some source 
of diversion that may be less easily exhausted, and to 
inform the multitudes of both sexes, who are burdened 
with every new day, that there are many shows which 
5 they have not seen. 

He that enlarges his curiosity after the works of 
nature, demonstrably multiplies the inlets to happiness; 
and therefore the younger part of my readers to whom 
I dedicate this vernal speculation, must excuse me for 

10 calling upon them, to make use at once of the spring 
of the year, and the spring of life; to acquire, while 
their minds may be yet impressed with new images, a 
love of innocent pleasures, and an ardor for useful 
knowledge ; and to remember that a blighted spring makes 

15 a barren year, and that the vernal flowers, however 
beautiful and gay, are only intended by nature as 
preparatives to autumnal fruits. 

No. 14. Saturday, May 5, 1750 

Nil fuit unquam 

Sic impar sibi Hor. Sat. 1. 3. 18, 19. 

Sure such a various creature ne'er was known. — Francis. 

Among the many inconsistencies which folly produces, 
or infirmity suffers in the human mind, there has often 

20 been observed a manifest and striking contrariety be- 
tween the life of an author and his writings; and Milton, 
in a letter to a learned stranger, by whom he had been 
visited, with great reason congratulates himself upon 
the consciousness of being found equal to his own char- 

25 acter, and having preserved, in a private and familiar 
interview, that reputation which his works had procured 
him. 

Those whom the appearance of virtue, or the evidence 
of genius, have tempted to a nearer knowledge of the 

30 writer in whose performances they may be found, have 
indeed had frequent reason to repent their curiosity; 
the bubble that sparkled before them has become com- 



72 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

mon water at the touch; the phantom of perfection has 
vanished when they wished to press it to their bosom. 
They have lost the pleasure of imagining how far hu- 
manity may be exalted, and, perhaps, felt themselves 
less inclined to toil up the steeps of virtue, when they 5 
observe those who seem best able to point the way 
loitering below, as either afraid of the labor, or doubtful 
of the reward. 

It has been long the custom of, the Oriental monarchs 
to hide themselves in gardens and palaces, to avoid the 10 
conversation of mankind, and to be known to their 
subjects only by their edicts. The same policy is no 
less necessary to him that writes, than to him that gov- 
erns; for men would not more patiently submit to be 
taught, than commanded, by one known to have the 15 
same follies and weaknesses with themselves. A sudden 
intruder into the closet of an author would, perhaps, 
feel equal indignation with the officer who, having long 
solicited admission into the presence of Sardanapalus, 
saw him not consulting upon laws, inquiring into griev- 20 
ances, or modelling armies, but employed in feminine 
amusements, and directing the ladies in their work. 

It is not difficult to conceive, however, that for many 
reasons a man writes much better than he lives. For 
without entering into refined speculations, it may be 25 
shown much easier to design than to perform. A man 
proposes his schemes of life in a state of abstraction 
and disengagement, exempt from the enticements of 
hope, the solicitations of affection, the importunities of 
appetite, or the depressions of fear, and is in the same 30 
state with him that teaches upon land the art of naviga- 
tion, to whom the sea is always smooth, and the wind 
always prosperous. 

The mathematicians are well acquainted with the dif- 
ference between pure science, which has to do only 35 
with ideas, and the application of its laws to the use 
of life, hi which they are constrained to submit to 



THE RAMBLER 73 

the imperfection of matter and the influence of acci- 
dents. Thus, in moral discussions, it is to be remembered 
that many impediments obstruct our practice, which 
very easily give way to theory. The speculatist is only 
5 in danger of erroneous reasoning ; but the man involved 
in life has his own passions, and those of others, to 
encounter, and is embarrassed with a thousand incon- 
veniencies, which confound him with variety of impulse, 
and either perplex or obstruct his way. He is forced 

10 to act without deliberation, and obliged to choose be- 
fore he can examine; he is surprised by sudden altera- 
tions of the state of things, and changes his measures 
according to superficial appearances; he is led by others, 
either because he is indolent, or because he is timorous; 

15 he is sometimes afraid to know what is right, and some- 
times finds friends or enemies diligent to deceive him. 

We are, therefore, not to wonder that most fail, amidst 
tumult, and snares, and danger, in the observance of 
those precepts, which they lay down in solitude, safety, 

20 and tranquillity, with a mind unbiased, and with liberty 
unobstructed. It is the condition of our present state 
to see more than we can attain; the exactest vigilance 
and caution can never maintain a single day of un- 
mingled innocence, much less can the utmost efforts of 

25 incorporated mind reach the summits of Cesarean 
power. 

It is, however, necessary for the idea of perfection to 
be proposed, that we may have some object to which 
our endeavors are to be directed; and he that is most 

30 deficient in the duties of life, makes some atonement 
for his faults, if he warns others against his own fail- 
ings, and hinders, by the salubrity of his admonitions, 
the contagion of his example. 

Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to 

35 charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those 
virtues which he neglects to practise; since he may be 
sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his 



74 SELECTIONS FR021 JOHNSON 

passions, without having yet obtained the victory, as 
a man may be confident of the advantages of a voyage, 
or a journey, without having courage or industry to 
undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others 
those attempts which he neglects himself. 5 

The interest which the corrupt part of mankind have 
in hardening themselves against every motive to amend- 
ment, has disposed them to give to these contradictions, 
when they can be produced against the cause of virtue, 
that weight which they will not allow them in any 10 
other case. They see men act in opposition to their 
interest, without supposing that they do not know it; 
those who give way to the sudden violence of passion, 
and forsake the most important pursuits for petty pleas- 
ures, are not supposed to have changed their opinions, 15 
or to approve their own conduct. In moral or religious 
questions alone, they determine the sentiments by the 
actions, and charge every man with endeavoring to im- 
pose upon the world, whose writings are not confirmed 
by his life. They never consider that themselves neglect 20 
or practise something every day inconsistently with their 
own settled judgment, nor discover that the conduct 
of the advocates for virtue can little increase, or lessen, 
the obligations of their dictates;- argument is to be in- 
validated only by argument, and is in itself of the 25 
same force, whether or not it convinces him by whom 
it is proposed. 

Yet since this prejudice, however unreasonable, is 
always likely to have some prevalence, it is the duty 
of every man to take care lest he should hinder the 30 
efficacy of his own instructions. When he desires to 
gain the belief of others, he should show that he believes 
himself; and when he teaches the fitness of virtue by 
his reasonings, he should, by his example, prove its pos- 
sibility. Thus much at least may be required of him, 35 
that he shall not act worse than others because he 
writes better, nor imagine that, by the merit of his 



THE RAMBLER 75 

genius, he may claim indulgence beyond mortals of the 
lower classes, and be excused for want of prudence, 
or neglect of virtue. 

Bacon, in his History of the Winds, after having 
5 offered something to the imagination as desirable, often 
proposes lower advantages in its place to the reason 
as attainable. The same method may be sometimes pur- 
sued in moral endeavors which this philosopher has 
observed in natural inquiries; having first set positive 

10 and absolute excellence before us, we may be pardoned 
though we sink down to humbler virtue, trying, however, 
to keep our point always in view, and struggling not to 
lose ground, though we cannot gain it. 

It is recorded of Sir Matthew Hale, that he for a 

15 long time concealed the consecration of himself to the 
stricter duties of religion, lest by some flagitious and 
shameful action he should bring piety into disgrace. 
For the same reason it may be prudent for a writer, 
who apprehends that he shall not enforce his own maxims 

20 by his domestic character to conceal his name, that he 
may not injure them. 

There are, indeed, a great number whose curiosity to 
gain a more familiar knowledge of successful writers 
is not so much prompted by an opinion of their power 

25 to improve as to delight, and who expect from them 
not arguments against' vice, or dissertations on tem- 
perance or justice, but flights of wit and sallies 
of pleasantry, or, at least, acute remarks, nice dis- 
tinctions, justness of sentiment, and elegance of 

30 diction. 

This expectation is, indeed, specious and probable, 
and yet, such is the fate of all human hopes, that it 
is very often frustrated, and those who raise admiration 
by their books, disgust by their company. A man of 

35 letters for the most part spends in the privacies of 
study that season of life in which the manners are to 
be softened into ease, and polished into elegance; and, 



76 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

when he has gained knowledge enough to be respected, 
has neglected the minuter acts by which he might have 
pleased. When he enters life, if his temper be soft 
and timorous, he is diffident and bashful, from the 
knowledge of his defects ; or if he w as born with spirit 5 
and resolution, he is ferocious and arrogant from the 
consciousness of his merit : he is either dissipated by 
the awe of company, and unable to recollect his reading 
and arrange his arguments; or he is hot and dogmatical, 
quick in opposition and tenacious in defense, disabled 10 
by his own violence, and confused by his haste to 
triumph. 

The graces of writing and conversation are of different 
kinds, and though he who excels in one might have 
been, with opportunities and application, equally sue- 15 
cessful in the other, yet as many please by extemporary 
talk, though utterly unacquainted with the more accurate 
method and more labored beauties which composition 
requires; so it is very possible that men wholly ac- 
customed to works of study may be without that readi- 20 
ness of conception and affluence of language always 
necessary to colloquial entertainment. They may want 
address to watch the hints which conversation offers for 
the display of their particular attainments, or they may 
be so much unfurnished with matter on common sub- 25 
jects that discourse not professedly literary glides over 
them as heterogeneous bodies, without admitting their 
conceptions to mix in the circulation. 

A transition from an author's book to his conversa- 
tion is too often like an entrance into a large city 30 
after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but 
spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine 
it the residence of splendor, grandeur, and magnificence; 
but, when we have passed the gates, we find it per- 
plexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable 35 
cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded 
with smoke. 



THE RAMBLER 77 

No. 16. Saturday, May 12, 1750 

Multis dicendi copia torrens, 



Et sua mortifera est facundla Juv. 10. 9. 

Some who the depths of eloquence have found, 

In that unnavigable stream were drown'd. — Dryden. 

Sir: 

I am the modest young man whom you favored with 
your advice in a late paper; and. as I am very far 
from suspecting that you foresaw the numberless in- 
5 conveniencies which I have, by following it, brought 
upon myself, I will lay my condition open before you, 
for you seem bound to extricate me from the perplexities 
in which your counsel, however innocent in the intention, 
has contributed to involve me. 
10 You told me, as you thought, to my comfort, that a 
writer might easily find means of introducing his genius 
to the world, for the ' presses of England were open/ 
This I have now fatally experienced; the press is, indeed, 
open. 

15 FaciJis descensus Avemi, 

Nodes atque dies patet atri jmiua Ditis. — Virg. 

The gates of hell are open night and day ; 
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way.- — Drydbn. 

The means of doing hurt to ourselves are always at 
hand. I immediately sent to a printer, and contracted 
with him for an impression of several thousands of my 

20 pamphlet. While it was at the press, I was seldom ab- 
sent from the printing-house, and continually urged the 
workmen to haste, by solicitations, promises, and re- 
wards. From the day all other pleasures were excluded 
by the delightful employment of correcting the sheets; 

25 and from the night sleep generally was banished by 
anticipations of the happiness which every hour was 
bringing nearer. 



78 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

At last the time of publication approached, and my 
heart beat with the raptures of an author. I was above 
all little precautions, and, in defiance of envy or of 
criticism, set my name upon the title, without suffi- 
ciently considering, that what has once passed the press 5 
is irrevocable, and that though the printing-house may 
properly be compared to the infernal regions for the 
facility of its entrance, and the difficulty with which 
authors return from it, yet there is this difference, that 
a great genius can never return to his former state, by 10 
a happy draught of the waters of oblivion. 

I am now, Mr. Rambler, known to be an author, and 
am condemned, irreversibly condemned, to all the mis- 
eries of high reputation. The first morning after pub- 
lication my friends assembled about me; I presented 15 
each, as is usual, with a copy of my book. They looked 
into the first pages, but were hindered by their admira- 
tion from reading further. The first pages are, indeed, 
very elaborate. Some passages they particularly dwelt 
upon, as more eminently beautiful than the rest ; and 20 
some delicate strokes, and secret elegancies, I pointed 
out to them, which had escaped their observation. I 
then begged of them to forbear their compliments, and 
invited them (I could do no less) to dine with me at 
a tavern. After dinner the book was resumed ; but 25 
their praises very often so much overpowered my mod- 
esty, that I was forced to put about the glass, and had 
often no means of repressing the clamors of their ad- 
miration, but by thundering to the drawer for another 
bottle. 30 

Next morning another set of my acquaintance con- 
gratulated me upon my performance, with such impor- 
tunity of praise, that I was again forced to obviate their 
civilities by a treat. On the third day, I had yet a 
greater number of applauders to put to silence in the 35 
same manner; and, on the fourth, those whom I had 
entertained the first day came again, having, in the 



THE RAMBLER 79 

perusal of the remaining part of the book, discovered 
so many forcible sentences and masterly touches, that 
it was impossible for me to bear the repetition of their 
commendations. I therefore persuaded them once more 
5 to adjourn to the tavern, and choose some other subject 
on which I might share in their conversation. But it 
was not in their power to withhold their attention from 
my performance, which had so entirely taken possession 
of their minds, that no entreaties of mine could change 

10 their topic, and I was obliged to stifle, with claret, that 
praise which neither my modesty could hinder, nor my 
uneasiness repress. 

The whole week was thus spent in a kind of literary 
revel, and I have now found that nothing is so expensive 

15 as great abilities, unless there is joined with them an 
insatiable eagerness of praise; for to escape from the 
pain of hearing myself exalted above the greatest names, 
dead and living, of the learned world, it has already cost 
me two hogsheads of port, fifteen gallons of arrack, 

20 ten dozen of claret, and five and forty bottles of cham- 
pagne. 

I was resolved to stay at home no longer, and there- 
fore rose early and went to the coffee-house; but found 
that I had now made myself too eminent for happiness, 

25 and that I was no longer to enjoy the pleasure of mix- 
ing, upon equal terms, with the rest of the world. As 
soon as I enter the room, I see part of the company 
raging with envy, which they endeavor to conceal, some- 
times with the appearance of laughter, and sometimes 

30 with that of contempt ; but the disguise is such that I 

can discover the secret rancor of their hearts, and as 

envy is deservedly its own punishment, I frequently 

indulge myself in tormenting them with my presence. 

But though there may be some slight satisfaction 

35 received from the mortification of my enemies, yet my 
benevolence will not suffer me to take any pleasure in 
the terrors of my friends. I have been cautious, since 



80 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

the appearance of my work, not to give myself more 
premeditated airs of superiority than the most rigid 
humility might allow. It is, indeed, not impossible that 
I may sometimes have laid down my opinion in a 
manner that showed a consciousness of my ability to f 
maintain it, or interrupted the conversation, when I 
saw its tendency, without suffering the speaker to waste 
his time in explaining his sentiments; and, indeed, I 
did indulge myself for two days in a custom of drum- 
ming with my fingers, when the company began to lose 10 
themselves in absurdities, or to encroach upon subjects 
which I knew them unqualified to discuss. But I gen- 
erally acted with great appearance of respect, even to 
those whose stupidity I pitied in my heart. Yet, not- 
withstanding this exemplary moderation, so universal 15 
is the dread of uncommon powers, and such the un- 
willingness of mankind to be made wiser, that I have 
now for some days found myself shunned by all my 
acquaintance. If I knock at a door, nobody is at home; 
if I enter a coffee-house, I have the box to myself. I 20 
live in the town like a lion in his desert, or an eagle 
on his rock, too great for friendship or society, and 
condemned to solitude by unhappy elevation and dreaded 
ascendency. 

Nor is my character only formidable to others, but 25 
burdensome to myself. I naturally love to talk without 
much thinking, to scatter my merriment at random, and 
to relax my thoughts with ludicrous remarks and fanci- 
ful images; but such is now the importance of my 
opinion, that I am afraid to offer it, lest, by being 30 
established too hastily into , a maxim, it should be the 
occasion of error to half the nation; and such is the 
expectation with which I am attended, when I am going 
to speak, that I frequently pause to reflect whether 
what I am about to utter is worthy of myself. 35 

This, Sir, is sufficiently miserable; but there are still 
greater calamities behind. You must have read in Pope 



THE RAMBLER 81 

and Swift how men of parts have had their closets 
rifled, and their cabinets broke open at the instigation 
of piratical booksellers, for the profit of their works; 
and it is apparent that there are many prints now sold 
5 in the shops of men whom you cannot suspect of sitting 
for that purpose, and whose likenesses must have been 
certainly stolen when their names made their faces 
vendible. These considerations at first put me on my 
guard, and I have, indeed, found sufficient reason for 

10 my caution, for I have discovered many people examin- 
ing my countenance with a curiosity that showed their 
intention to draw it; I immediately left the house, but 
find the same behavior in another. 

Others may be persecuted, but I am haunted; I have 

15 good reason to believe that eleven painters are now 
dogging me, for they know that he who can get my 
face first will make his fortune. I often change my 
wig, and wear my hat over my eyes, by which I hope 
somewhat to confound them; for you know it is not fair 

20 to sell my face without admitting me to share the 
profit. 

I am, however, not so much in pain for my face 
as for my papers, which I dare neither carry with me 
nor leave behind. I have, indeed, taken some measures 

25 for their preservation, having put them in an iron chest, 
and fixed a padlock upon my closet. I change my lodg- 
ings five times a week, and always remove at the dead 
of night. 

Thus I live, in consequence of having given too great 

30 proofs of a predominant genius, in the solitude of a 
hermit, with the anxiety of a miser, and the caution of 
an outlaw; afraid to show my face lest it should be 
copied; afraid to speak, lest I should injure my charac- 
ter; and to write, lest my correspondents should publish 

35 my letters; always uneasy, lest my servants should steal 
my papers for the sake of money, or my friends for 
that of the public. This it is to soar above the rest of 



82 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

mankind; and this representation I lay before you, that 
I may be informed how to divest myself of the laurels 
which are so cumbersome to the wearer, and descend 
to the enjoyment of that quiet from which I find a 
writer of the first class so fatally debarred. 5 

MlSELLUS. 

No. 50. Saturday, September 8, 1750 

Credebant quo grande nefas, et morte piandum, 
81 juvenis vetulo non assurrexerat, et si 
Baroato cuicunque puer, licet ipse videret 
Plura domi fraga, et majores glandis acervos. 

— Juv. 13. 54-7 

And had not men the hoary head rever'd, 
And boys paid rev'rence when a man appear'd, 
Both must have died, though richer skins they wore, 
And saw more heaps of acorns in their store. 

— Creech. 

I have always thought it the business of those who 
turn their speculations upon the living world, to com- 
mend the virtues, as well as to expose the faults of 
their contemporaries, and to confute a false as well as 10 
to support a just accusation; not only because it is 
peculiarly the business of a monitor to keep his own 
reputation untainted, lest those, who can once charge 
him with partiality, should indulge themselves after- 
wards in disbelieving him at pleasure ; but because he 15 
may find real crimes sufficient to give full employment 
to caution or repentance, without distracting the mind 
by needless scruples and vain solicitudes. 

There are certain fixed and stated reproaches that 
one part of mankind has in all ages thrown upon an- 20 
other, which are regularly transmitted through con- 
tinued successions, and which he that has once suffered 
them is certain to use with the same undistinguishing 
vehemence, when he has changed his station, and gained 
the prescriptive right of inflicting on others what he had 25 
formerly endured himself. 



THE RAMBLER 83 

To these hereditary imputations, of which no man sees 
the justice, till it becomes his interest to see it, very little 
regard is to be shown; since it does not appear that 
they are produced by ratiocination or inquiry, but re- 
5 ceived implicitly, or caught by a kind of instantaneous 
contagion, and supported rather by willingness to credit, 
than ability to prove them. 

It has been always the practice of those who are 
desirous to believe themselves made venerable by length 

10 of time, to censure the new comers into life for want 
of respect to grey hairs and sage experience, for heady 
confidence in their own understandings, for hasty con- 
clusions upon partial views, for disregard of counsels, 
which their fathers and grandsires are ready to afford 

15 them, and a rebellious impatience of that subordination 
to which youth is condemned by nature, as necessary 
to its security from evils into which it would be other- 
wise precipitated by the rashness of passion, and the 
blindness of ignorance. 

20 Every old man complains of the growing depravity 
of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the 
rising generation. He recounts the decency and regu- 
larity of former times, and celebrates the discipline and 
sobriety of the age in which his youth was passed; 

25 a happy age, which is now no more to be expected, 
since confusion has broken in upon the world, and thrown 
down all the boundaries of civility and reverence. 

It is not sufficiently considered how much he assumes 
who dares to claim the privilege of complaining; for 

30 as every man has, in his own opinion, a full share of 
the miseries of life, he is inclined to consider all clamor- 
ous uneasiness as a proof of impatience rather than 
of affliction, and to ask, ' What merit has this man to 
show, by which he has acquired a right to repine at 

35 the distributions of nature? Or, why does he imagine 
that exemptions should be granted him from the general 
condition of man 1 ' We find ourselves excited rather 



84 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

to captiousness than pity, and instead of being in haste 
to soothe his complaints by sympathy and tenderness, 
we inquire whether the pain be proportionate to 
the lamentation; and whether, supposing the affliction 
real, it is not the effect of vice and folly, rather than 5 
calamity. 

The querulousness and indignation which is observed 
so often to disfigure the last scene of life, naturally leads 
us to inquiries like these. For surely it will be thought 
at the first view of things, that if age be thus contemned 10 
and ridiculed, insulted and neglected, the crime must at 
least be equal, on either part. They who have had 
opportunities of establishing their authority over minds 
ductile and unresisting, they who have been the pro- 
tectors of helplessness, and the instructors of ignorance, 15 
and who yet retain in their own hands the power of 
wealth, and the dignity of command, must defeat 
their influence by their own misconduct, and make 
use of all these advantages with very little skill, 
if they cannot secure to themselves an appearance 20 
of respect, and ward off open mockery and declared 
contempt. 

The general story of mankind will evince, that lawful 
and settled authority is very seldom resisted when it 
is well employed. Gross corruption, or evident imbe- 25 
cility, is necessary to the suppression of that reverence 
with which the majority of mankind look upon their 
governors, and on those whom they see surrounded by 
splendor, and fortified by power. For though men are 
drawn by their passions into f orgetf ulness of invisible 30 
rewards and punishments, yet they are easily kept obe- 
dient to those who have temporal dominion in their 
hands, till their veneration is dissipated by such wicked- 
ness and folly as can neither be defended nor con- 
cealed. B5 

It may, therefore, very reasonably be suspected that 
the old draw upon themselves the greatest part of those 



THE RAMBLER 85 

insults which they so much lament, and that age is 
rarely despised but when it is contemptible. If men 
imagine that excess of debauchery can be made reverend 
by time, that knowledge is the consequence of long life, 
5 however idly or thoughtlessly employed, that priority of 
birth will supply the want of steadiness or honesty, 
can it raise much wonder that their hopes are disap- 
pointed, and that they see their posterity rather willing 
to trust their own eyes in their progress into life, 

10 than enlist themselves under guides who have lost their 
way? 

There are, indeed, many truths which time necessarily 
and certainly teaches, and which might, by those who 
have learned them from experience, be communicated to 

15 their successors at a cheaper rate : but dictates, though 
liberally enough bestowed, are generally without effect, 
the teacher gains few proselytes by instruction which 
his own behavior contradicts; and young men miss the 
benefit of counsel, because they are not very ready to 

20 believe that those who fall below them in practice, can 
much excel them in theory. Thus the progress of know- 
ledge is retarded, the world is kept long in the same 
state, and every new race is to gain the prudence of 
their predecessors by committing and redressing the same 

25 miscarriages. 

To secure to the old that influence which they are 
willing to claim, and which might so much contribute to 
the improvement of the arts of life, it is absolutely 
necessary that they give themselves up to the duties of 

30 declining years ; and contentedly resign to youth its 
levity, its pleasures, its frolics, and its fopperies. It 
is a hopeless endeavor to unite the contrarieties of spring 
and winter; it is unjust to claim the privileges of ag"e, 
and retain the playthings of childhood. The young al- 

35 ways form magnificent ideas of the wisdom and gravity 
of men whom they consider as placed at a distance 
from them in the ranks of existence, and naturally look 



86 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

on those whom they find trifling with long beards, with 
contempt and indignation, like that which women feel 
at the effeminacy of men. If dotards will contend with 
boys in those performances in which boys must always 
excel them ; if they will dress crippled limbs in em- 5 
broidery, endeavor at gaiety with faltering voices, and 
darken assemblies of pleasure with the ghastliness of 
disease, they may well expect those who find their diver- 
sions obstructed will hoot them away; and that if they 
descend to competition with youth, they must bear the 10 
insolence of successful rivals. 

Lusisti satis, edisti satis at que bibisti: 
Tempus abire tibi est. 

You've had your share of mirth, of meat and drink ; 
'Tis time to quit the scene — 'tis time to think. 

— Elphixstox. 

Another vice of age by which the rising generation 
may be alienated from it is severity and censoriousness, 15 
that gives no allowance to the failings of early life, 
that expects artfulness from childhood and constancy 
from youth, that is peremptory in every command and 
inexorable to every failure. There are many who live 
merely to hinder happiness, and whose descendants can 20 
only tell of long life, that it produces suspicion, malig- 
nity, peevishness, and persecution; and yet even these 
tyrants can talk of the ingratitude of the age, curse their 
heirs for impatience, and wonder that young men can- 
not take pleasure in their father's company. 25 

He that would pass the latter part of life with honor 
and decency, must, when he is young, consider that he 
shall one day be old ; and remember, when he is old, that 
he has once been young. In youth he must lay up 
knowledge for his support, when his powers of act- 30 
ing shall forsake him; and in age forbear to anim- 
advert with rigor on faults which experience only can 
correct. 



THE RAMBLER 87 

No. 60. Saturday, October 13, 1750 

— Quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non, 
Planius et melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit. 

— Hor. Ep. 1. 2. 4. 

Whose works the beautiful and base contain, 

Of vice and virtue more instructive rules 

Than all the sober sages of the schools. — Francis. 

All joy or sorrow for the happiness or calamities of 
others is produced by an act of the imagination that 
realizes the event however fictitious, or approximates it 
however remote, by placing us, for a time, in the con- 
5 dition of him whose fortune we contemplate ; so that 
we feel, while the deception lasts, whatever motions 
would be excited by the same good or evil happening 
to ourselves. 

Our passions are therefore more strongly moved, in 

10 proportion as we can more readily adopt the pains or 
pleasure proposed to our minds, by recognizing them 
as once our own, or considering them as naturally in- 
cident to our state of life. It is not easy for the most 
artful writer to give us an interest in happiness or 

15 misery which we think ourselves never likely to feel, 
and with which we have never yet been made acquainted. 
Histories of the downfall of kingdoms, and revolutions 
of empires, are read with great tranquillity; the im- 
perial tragedy pleases common auditors only by its 

20 pomp of ornament, and grandeur of ideas ; and the man 
whose faculties have been engrossed by business, and 
whose heart never fluttered but at the rise or fall of 
the stocks, wonders how the attention can be seized, 
or the affection agitated, by a tale of love. 

25 Those parallel circumstances and kindred images to 
which we readily conform our minds are, above all other 
writings, to be found in narratives of the lives of par- 
ticular persons; and therefore no species of writing 



88 SELECTIONS FBOM JOHNSON 

seems more worthy, of cultivation than biography, since 
none can be more delightful or more useful, none can 
more certainly enchain the heart by irresistible interest, 
or more widely diffuse instruction to every diversity of 
condition. 5 

The general and rapid narratives of history, which 
involve a thousand fortunes in the business of a day, 
and complicate innumerable incidents in one great trans- 
action, afford few lessons applicable to private life, 
which derives its comforts and its wretchedness from 10 
the right or wrong management of things, which nothing 
but their frequency makes considerable—' Parva si non 
flant quoticlie/ says Pliny — and which can have no place 
in " those relations which never descend below the con- 
sultation of senates, the motions of armies, and the 15 
schemes of conspirators. 

I have often thought that there has rarely passed a 
life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would 
not be useful. For, not only every man has, in the 
mighty mass of the world, great numbers in the same 20 
condition with himself, to whom his mistakes and mis- 
carriages, escapes and expedients, would be of immediate 
and apparent use ; but there is such an uniformity in the 
state of man, considered apart from adventitious and 
separable decorations and disguises, that there is scarce 25 
any possibility of good or ill, but is common to human 
kind. A great part of the time of those who are placed 
at the greatest distance by fortune, or by temper, must 
unavoidably pass in the same manner; and though, when 
the claims of nature are satisfied, caprice, and vanity, 30 
and accident, begin to produce discriminations and pe- 
culiarities, yet the eye is not very heedful or quick 
which cannot discover the same causes still terminating 
their influence in the same effects, though sometimes 
accelerated, sometimes retarded, or perplexed by multi- 35 
plied combinations. We are all prompted by the same 
motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated 



THE RAMBLER 89 

by hope, obstructed b} r danger, entangled by desire, and 
seduced by pleasure. 

It is frequently objected to relations of particular 
lives, that they are not distinguished by any striking or 
5 wonderful vicissitudes. The scholar who passed his life 
among his books, the merchant who conducted only his 
own affairs, the priest whose sphere of action was not 
extended beyond that of his duty, are considered as no 
proper objects of public regard, however they might 

10 have excelled in their several stations, whatever might 
have been their learning, integrity, and piety. But this 
notion arises from false measures of excellence and 
dignity, and must be eradicated by considering that, 
in the esteem of uncorrupted reason, what is of most 

15 use is of most value. 

It is, indeed, not improper to take honest advantages 
of prejudice, and to gain attention by a celebrated 
name; but the business of the biographer is often to 
pass slightly over those performances and incidents 

20 which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts 
into domestic privacies, and display the minute details 
of daily life, where exterior appendages are cast aside, 
and men excell each other only by prudence and by 
virtue. The account of Thuanus is, with great pro- 

25 priety, said by its author to have been written that 
it might lay open to posterity the private and familiar 
character of that man, ' cujus ingenium et candorem ex 
ipsius scriptis sunt olim semper miraturi ' — l whose can- 
dor and genius will to the end of time be by his writings 

SO preserved in admiration/ 

There are many invisible circumstances which, whether 
we read as inquirers after natural or moral knowledge, 
whether we intend to enlarge our science, or increase 
our virtue, are more important than public occurrences. 

35 Thus Sallust, the great master of nature, has not for- 
got, in his account of Catiline, to remark that * his walk 
was now quick, and again slow/ as an indication of 



90 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

a mind revolving something with violent commotion. 
Thus the story of Melanethon affords a striking lecture 
on the value of time, by informing us that, when he 
made an appointment, he expected not only the hour, 
but the minute to be fixed, that the day might not run 5 
out in the idleness of suspense; and all the plans and 
enterprizes of De Witt are now of less importance to 
the world, than that part of his personal character 
which represents him as i careful of his health, and 
negligent of his life.' ' 10 

But biography has often been allotted to writers who 
seem very little acquainted with the nature of their 
task, or very negligent about the performance. They 
rarely afford any other account than might be collected 
from public papers, but imagine themselves writing a 15 
life when they exhibit a chronological series of actions 
or preferments; and so little regard the manners or 
behavior of their heroes, that more knowledge may be 
gained of a man's real character, by a short conversa- 
tion with one of his servants, than from a formal and 20 
studied narrative, begun with his pedigree, and ended 
with his funeral. 

If now and then they condescend to inform the world 
of particular facts, they are not always so happy as 
to select the most important. I know not well what 25 
advantage posterity can receive from the only circum- 
stance by which Tickell has distinguished Addison from 
the rest of mankind, ' the irregularity of his pulse ' ; 
nor can I think myself overpaid for the time spent in 
reading the life of Malherb by being enabled to relate 30 
after the learned biographer, that Malherb had two 
predominant opinions: one, that the looseness of a 
single woman might destroy all her boast of ancient 
descent; the other, that the French beggars made use 
very improperly and barbarously of the phrase ' noble 35 
gentleman/ because either word included the sense of 
both. 



THE RAMBLER 91 

There are, indeed, some natural reasons why these 
narratives are often written by such as were not likely 
to give much instruction or delight, and why most 
accounts of particular persons are barren and useless. 
5 If a life be delayed till interest and envy are at an 
end, we may hope for impartiality, but must expect 
little intelligence; for the incidents which give excel- 
lence to biography are of a volatile and evanescent kind, 
such as soon escape the memory, and are rarely trans- 

lOmitted by tradition. We know how few can portray 
a living acquaintance, except by his most prominent 
and observable particularities, and the grosser features 
of his mind; and it may be easily imagined how much 
of this little knowledge may be lost in imparting it, 

15 and how soon a succession of copies will lose all re- 
semblance of the original. 

If the biographer writes from personal knowledge, 
and makes haste to gratify the public curiosity, there 
is danger lest his interest, his fear, his gratitude, or 

20 his tenderness, overpower his fidelity, and tempt him 
to conceal, if not to invent. There are many who think 
it an act of piety to hide the faults or failings of their 
friends, even when they can no longer suffer by their 
detection; we therefore see whole ranks of characters 

25 adorned with uniform panegyric, and not to be known 
from one another, but by extrinsic and casual circum- 
stances. ' Let me remember/ says Hale, 6 when I find 
myself inclined to pity a criminal, that there is like- 
wise a pity due to the country.' If we owe regard to 

30 the memory of the dead, there is yet more respect to 
be paid to knowledge, to virtue, and to truth. 



b~> 



92 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 



No. 72. Saturday, November 24, 1750 

Omnis Aristippum decuit color, et status, et res, 
Temptantem majora, fere prcesentibus cequum. 

— Hor. Ep. 1. 17. 23. 

Yet Aristippus ev'ry dress became, 

In ev'ry various change of life the same ; 

And though he aim'd at things of higher kind, 

Yet to the present held an equal mind. — Francis. 



to the rambler 
Sir: 

Those who exalt themselves into the chair of instruc- 
tion, without inquiring whether any will submit to their 
authority, have not sufficiently considered how much of 
human life passes in little incidents, cursory conversa- 5 
tion, slight business, and casual amusements; and there- 
fore they have endeavored only to inculcate the more 
awful virtues, without condescending to regard those 
petty qualities, which grow important only by their 
frequency, and which, though they produce no single 10 
acts of heroism, nor astonish us by great events, yet 
are every moment exerting their influence upon us, and 
make the draught of life sweet or bitter by imperceptible 
instillations. They operate unseen and unregarded, as 
change of air makes us sick or healthy, though we 15 
breathe it without attention, and only know the particles 
that impregnate it by their salutary or malignant effects. 

You have shown yourself not ignorant of the value 
of those subaltern endowments, yet have hitherto neg- 
lected to recommend good humor to the world, though 20 
a little reflection will show you that it is the ' balm 
of being/ the quality to which all that adorns or elevates 
mankind must owe its power of pleasing. Without good 
humor, learning and bravery can only confer that su- 
periority which swells the heart of the lion in the desert, 25 
where he roars without reply, and ravages without re- 



THE RAMBLER 93 

sistance. Without good humor virtue may awe by its 
dignity, and amaze by its brightness; but must always 
be viewed at a distance, and. will scarcely gain a friend 
or attract an imitator. . 
5 Good humor may be defined a habit of being pleased; 
a constant and perennial softness of manner, easiness 
of approach, and suavity of disposition; like that which 
every man perceives in himself, when the first transports 
of new felicity have subsided, and his thoughts are only 

10 kept in motion by a slow succession of soft impulses. 

Good humor is a state between gaiety and unconcern; 

the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the 

gratification of another. _y 

It is imagined by many, that whenever they aspire to 

15 please, they are required to be merry, and to show 
the gladness of their souls by flights of pleasantry, 
and bursts of laughter. But though these men may 
be for a time heard with applause and admiration, 
they seldom delight us long. We enjoy them a little, 

20 and then retire to easiness and good humor, as the eye 
gazes awhile on eminences glittering with the sun, but 
soon turns aching away to verdure and to flowers. 

Gaiety is to good humor as animal perfumes to vege- 
table fragrance; the one overpowers weak spirits, and 

25 the other recreates and revives them. Gaiety seldom 
fails to give some pain; the hearers either strain their 
faculties to accompany its towerings, or are left behind 
in envy and despair. Good humor boasts no faculties 
which every one does not believe in his own power, 

30 and pleases principally by not offending. 

It is well known that the most certain way to give 
any man pleasure is to persuade him that you receive 
pleasure from him, to encourage him to freedom and 
confidence, and to avoid any such appearance of su- 

35 periority as may overbear and depress him. We see 
many that, by this art only, spend their days in the midst 
of caresses, invitations, and civilities; and without any 



94 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

extraordinary qualities or attainments, are the universal 
favorites of both sexes, and certainly find a friend in 
every place. The darlings of the world will, indeed, 
be generally found such as excite neither jealousy nor 
fear, and are not considered as candidates for any 5 
eminent degree of reputation, but content themselves 
with common accomplishments, and endeavor rather to 
solicit kindness than to raise esteem; therefore in as- 
semblies and places of resort it seldom fails to happen, 
tHat though at the entrance, of some particular person 10 
every face brightens with gladness, and every hand is 
extended in salutation, yet if you pursue him beyond 
the first exchange of civilities, you will find him of very 
small importance, and only welcome to the company 
as one by whom all conceive themselves admired, and 15 
with whom any one is at liberty to amuse himself when 
he can find no other auditor or companion: as one with 
whom all are at ease, who will hear a jest without criti- 
cism, and a narrative without contradiction, who laughs 
with every wit, and yields to every disputer. 20 

There are many whose vanity always inclines them 
to associate with those from whom they have no reason 
to fear mortification; and there are times in which the 
wise and the knowing are willing to receive praise with- 
out the labor of deserving it, in which the most elevated 25 
mind is willing to descend, and the most active to be 
at rest. All therefore are at some hour or another 
fond of companions whom they can entertain upon easy 
terms, and who will relieve them from solitude, without 
condemning them to vigilance and caution. We are 30 
most inclined to love when we have nothing to fear, 
and he that encourages us to please ourselves, will not 
be long without preference in our affection to those 
whose learning holds us at the distance of pupils, or 
whose wit calls all attention from us, and leaves us 35 
without importance and without regard. 

It is remarked by Prince Henry, when he sees Fal- 



THE RAMBLER 95 

staff lying on the ground, that ' he could have better 
spared a better man/ He was well acquainted with 
the vices and follies of him whom he lamented, but 
while his conviction compelled him to do justice to su- 
5 perior qualities, his tenderness still broke out at the 
remembrance of Falstaff, of the cheerful companion, 
the loud buffoon, with whom he had passed his time in 
all the luxury of idleness, who had gladded him with 
un en vied merriment, and whom he could at once enjoy 

10 and despise. 

You may perhaps think this account of those who 
are distinguished for their good humor, not very con- 
sistent with the praises which I have bestowed upon it. 
But surely nothing can more evidently show the value 

15 of this quality, than that it recommends those who are 
destitute of all- other excellencies, and procures regard 
to the trifling, friendship to the worthless, and affection 
to the dull. 

Good humor is indeed generally degraded by the char- 

20 acters in which it is found ; for, being considered as a 
cheap and vulgar quality, we find it often neglected by 
those that, having excellencies of higher reputation and 
brighter splendor, perhaps imagine that they have some 
right to gratify themselves at the expense of others, 

25 and are to demand compliance, rather than to practise 
it. It is by some unfortunate mistake that almost all 
those who have any claim to esteem or love, press their 
pretensions with too little consideration of others. This 
mistake my own interest, as well as my zeal for general 

30 happiness, makes me desirous to rectify ; for I have 
a friend who, because he knows his own fidelity and 
usefulness, is never willing to sink into a companion; 
I have a wife whose beauty first subdued me, and whose 
wit confirmed her conquest, but whose beauty now serves 

35 no other purpose than to entitle her to tyranny, and 
whose wit is only used to justify perverseness. 

Surely nothing can be more unreasonable than to 



96 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

lose the will to please, when we are conscious of the 
power, or show more cruelty, than to choose any kind 
of influence before that of kindness. He that regards 
the welfare of others should make his virtue approach- 
able, that it may be loved and copied ; and he that 5 
considers the wants which every man feels, or will feel, 
of external assistance, must rather wish to be surrounded 
by those that love him, than by those that admire his 
excellencies, or solicit his favors; for admiration ceases 
with novelty, and interest gains its end and retires. A 10 
man whose great qualities want the ornament of super- 
ficial attractions, is like a naked mountain with mines 
of gold, which will be frequented only till the treasure 
is exhausted. I am, &c. 

Philomides. 15 

No. 93. Tuesday, February 5, 1751 

Experiar quid concedatur in illos, 

Quorum flaminid tegitur cinis atque Latin&j 

— Juv. 1. 170,1. 

More safely truth to urge her claim presumes, 
On names now found alone on hooks and tomhs. 

There are few books on which more time is spent 
by young students, than on treatises which deliver the 
characters of authors; nor any which oftener deceive 
the expectation of the reader, or fill his mind with more 
opinions which the progress of his studies and the in- 20 
crease of his knowledge oblige him to resign. 

Baillet has introduced his collection of the decisions 
of the learned, by an enumeration of the prejudices 
which mislead the critic, and raise the passions in re- 
bellion against the judgment. His catalogue, though 25 
large, is imperfect; and who can hope to complete it? 
The beauties of writing have been observed to be often 
such as cannot in the present state of human knowledge 
be evinced by evidence, or drawn out into demonstra- 



THE RAMBLER 97 

tions; they are therefore wholly subject to the imagina- 
tion, and do not force their effects upon a mind pre- 
occupied by unfavorable sentiments, nor overcome the 
counteraction of a false principle or of stubborn par- 
5 tiality. 

To convince any man against his will is hard, but 
to please him against his will is justly pronounced by 
Dryden to be above the reach of human abilities. In- 
terest and passion will hold out long agahist the closest 

10 siege of diagrams and syllogisms, but they are abso- 
lutely impregnable to imagery and sentiment; and will 
for ever bid defiance to the most powerful strains of 
Virgil or Homer, though they may give way in time 
to the batteries of Euclid or Archimedes. 

15 In trusting therefore to the sentence of a critic, we 
are in danger not only from that vanity which exalts 
writers too often to the dignity of teaching what they 
are yet to learn, from that negligence which sometimes 
steals upon the most vigilant caution, and that falli- 

20 bility to which the condition of nature has subjected 
every human understanding; but from a thousand 
extrinsic and accidental causes, from every thing which 
can excite kindness, or malevolence, veneration or 
contempt. 

25 Many of those who have determined with great bold- 
ness upon the various degrees of literary merit, may be 
justly suspected of having passed sentence, as Seneca 
remarks of Claudius, 

Und tantum parte, auditd, 
30 Scepe et nulld, 

without much knowledge of the cause before them: for 
it will not easily be imagined of Langbaine, Borrichius, 
or Rapin, that they had very accurately perused all the 
books which they praise or censure; or that, even if 
85 nature and learning had qualified them for judges, they 
could read for ever with the attention necessary to just 



98 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

criticism. Such performances, however, are not wholly 
without their use; for they are commonly just echoes 
to the voice of fame, and transmit the general suffrage 
of mankind when they have no particular motives to 
suppress it. 5 

Critics, like the rest of mankind, are very frequently 
—isled by interest. The bigotry with which editors re- 
ard the authors whom they illustrate or correct, has 
oeen generally remarked. Dryden was known to have 
written most of his critical dissertations only to recom- 10 
mend the work upon which he then happened to be 
employed; and Addison is suspected to have denied the 
expediency of poetical justice, because his own Cato 
was condemned to perish in a good cause. 

There are 'prejudices which authors, not otherwise 15 
weak or corrupt, have indulged without scruple; and 
perhaps some, of them are so complicated with our 
natural affections, that they cannot easily be disen- 
tangled from the heart. Scarce any can hear with im- 
partiality a comparison between the writers of his own 20 
and another country; and though it cannot, I think, be 
charged equally on all nations, that they are blinded 
with this literary patriotism, yet there are none that 
do not look upon their authors . with the fondness of 
affinity, and esteem them as well for the place of their 25 
birth, as for their knowledge or their wit. There is, 
therefore, seldom much respect due to comparative criti- 
cism, when the competitors are of different countries, 
unless the judge is bf a nation equally indifferent to 
both. The Italians could not for a long time believe 30 
that there was any learning beyond the mountains; 
and the French seem generally persuaded that there 
are no wits or reasoners equal to their own. I can 
scarcely conceive that, if Scaliger had not considered 
himself as allied to Virgil, by being born in the same 35 
country, he would have found his works so much su- 
perior to those of Homer, or have thought the con- 



THE RAMBLER 99 

troversy worthy of so much zeal, vehemence, and acri- 
mony. 

There is, indeed, one prejudice, and only one, by 
which it may be doubted whether it is any dishonor to 
5 be sometimes misguided. Criticism has so often given 
occasion to the envious and ill-natured of gratifying 
their malignity, that some have thought it necessary to 
recommend the virtue of candor without restrietic 
and to preclude all future liberty of censure. Writeq 

10 possessed with this opinion are continually enforcing 
civility and decency, recommending to critics the proper 
diffidence of themselves, and inculcating the veneration 
due to celebrated names. 

I am not of opinion that these professed enemies of 

15 arrogance and severity have much more benevolence or 
modesty than the rest of mankind; or that they feel 
in their own hearts any other intention than to dis- 
tinguish themselves by their softness and delicacy. Some 
are modest because they are timorous, and some are 

20 lavish of praise because they hope to be repaid. 

There is indeed some tenderness due to living writers, 
when they attack none of those truths which are of 
importance to the happiness of mankind, and have com- 
mitted no other offense than that of betraying their 

25 own ignorance or dullness. I should think it cruelty 
to crush an insect who had provoked me only by buzzing 
in my ear; and would not willingly interrupt the dream 
of harmless stupidity, or destroy the jest which makes 
its author laugh. Yet I am far from thinking this 

80 tenderness universally necessary; for he that writes may 
be considered as a kind of general challenger, whom 
every one has a right to attack; since he quits the com- 
mon rank of life, steps forward beyond the lists, and 
offers his merit to the public judgment. To commence 

35 author is to claim praise, and no man can justly aspire 
^to honor, but at the hazard of disgrace. 

But whatever be decided concerning contemporaries — 



100 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

whom he that knows the treachery of the human heart, 
and considers how often we gratify our own pride or 
envy under the appearance of contending for elegance 
and propriety, will find himself not much inclined to 
disturb — there can surely be no exemptions pleaded to 5 
secure them from criticism who can no longer suffer 
by reproach, and of whom nothing now remains but 
their writings and their names. Upon these authors 
the critic is undoubtedly at full liberty to exercise the 
strictest severity, since he endangers only his own fame, 10 
and, like iEneas when he drew his sword in the in- 
fernal regions, encounters phantoms which cannot be 
wounded. He may indeed pay some regard to estab- 
lished reputation; but he can by that show of reverence 
consult only his own security, for all other motives are 15 
now at an end. 

The faults of a writer of acknowledged excellence are 
more dangerous, because the influence of his example is 
more extensive; and the interest of learning requires 
that they should be discovered and stigmatized, before 20 
they have the sanction of antiquity conferred upon them, 
and become precedents of indisputable authority. 

It has, indeed, been advanced by Addison, as one of 
the characteristics of a true critic, that he points out 
beauties rather than faults. But it is rather natural 25 
to a man of learning and genius to apply himself 
chiefly to the study of writers who have more beauties 
than faults to be displayed: for the duty of criticism 
is neither to depreciate, nor dignify by partial repre- 
sentations, but to hold out the light of reason, what- 30 
ever it may discover; and to promulgate the determina- 
tions of truth, whatever she shall dictate. 



THE RAMBLER 101 

No. 102. Saturday, March 9, 1751 

Ipsa quoque assiduo iaountur tempora motu, 
Non secus ac flumen: neque enim consistere flumen, 
Nee levis liora potest; sed ut unda impellitur unda, 
Vrgeturque prior veniente, urgetque priorem, 
Tempora sic fuginnt pariter, pariterque sequuntur. 

— Ovid, Met. 15. 179-83. 

With constant motion as the moments glide, 

Behold in running life the rolling tide! 

For none can stem by art, or stop by pow'r, 

The flowing ocean, or the fleeting hour : 

But wave by wave pursued arrives on shore, 

And each impell'd behind impels before : 

So time on time revolving we descry ; 

So minutes follow, and so minutes fly. — Elphinston. 

1 Life/ says Seneca, ' is a voyage, in the progress of 
which we are perpetually changing our scenes; we first 
leave childhood behind us, then youth, then the years 
of ripened manhood, then the better and more pleasing 
5 part of old age/ The perusal of this passage having 
incited in me a train of reflections on the state of man, 
the incessant fluctuation of his wishes, the gradual 
change of his disposition to all external objects, and 
the thoughtlessness with which he floats along the stream 

10 of time, I sunk into a slumber amidst my meditations, 
and on a sudden found my ears filled with the tumult 
of labor, the shouts of alacrity, the shrieks of alarm, 
the whistle of winds, and the dash of waters. 

My astonishment for a time repressed my curiosity; 

15 but soon recovering myself so far as to inquire whither 
we were going, and what was the cause of such clamor 
and confusion, I was told that we were launching out 
into the c ocean of life'; that we had -already passed 
the straits of infancy, in which multitudes had perished, 

20 some by the weakness and fragility of their vessels, 
and more by the folly, perverseness, or negligence of 
those who undertook to steer them; and that we were 
now on the main sea, abandoned to the winds and bil- 
lows, without any other means of security than the care 



102 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

of the pilot, whom it was always in our power to choose 
among great numbers that offered their direction and 
assistance. 

I then looked round with anxious eagerness; and first 
turning my eyes behind me, saw a stream flowing 5 
through flowery islands, which every one that sailed 
along seemed to behold with pleasure ; but no sooner 
touched than the current, which, though not noisy or 
turbulent, was yet irresistible, bore him away. Beyond 
these islands all was darkness, ' nor could any of the 10 
passengers describe the shore at which he first em- 
barked. 

Before me, and on each side, was an expanse of 
waters violently agitated, and covered with so thick a 
mist, that the most perspicacious eye could see but a 15 
little way. It appeared to be full of rocks and whirl- 
pools, for many sunk unexpectedly while they were 
courting the gale with full sails, and insulting those 
whom they had left behind. So numerous, indeed, were 
the dangers, and so thick the darkness, that no caution 20 
could confer security. Yet there were many who, by 
false intelligence, betrayed their followers into whirl- 
pools, or by violence pushed those whom they found in 
their way against the rocks. 

The current was invariable and insurmountable; but 25 
though it was impossible to sail against it, or to return 
to the place that was once passed, yet it was not so 
violent as to allow no opportunities for dexterity or 
courage, since, though none could retreat back from 
danger, yet they might often avoid it by oblique di- 30 
rection. 

It was, however, not very common to steer with much 
care or prudence; for by some universal infatuation, 
every man appeared to think himself safe, though he 
saw his consorts every moment sinking round him; and 35 
no sooner had the waves closed over them, than their 
fate and their misconduct were forgotten; the voyage 



THE RAMBLER 103 

was pursued with the same jocund confidence; every 
man congratulated himself upon the soundness of his 
vessel, and believed himself able to stem the whirlpool 
in which his friend was swallowed, or glide over the 
5 rocks on which he was dashed : nor was it often ob- 
served that the sight of a wreck made any man change 
his course : if he turned aside for a moment, he soon 
forgot the rudder, and left himself again to the disposal 
of chance. 

10 This negligence did not proceed from indifference, or 
from weariness of their present condition; for not one 
of those who thus rushed upon destruction, failed, when 
he was sinking, to call loudly upon his associates 
for that help which could not now be given him; and 

15 many spent their last moments in cautioning others 
against the folly by which they were intercepted in 
the midst of their course. Their benevolence was 
sometimes praised, but their admonitions were un- 
regarded. 

20 The vessels in which we had embarked being con- 
fessedly unequal to the turbulence of the stream of life, 
were visibly impaired in the course of the voyage; so 
that every passenger was certain, that how long soever 
he might, by favorable accidents, or by incessant vigi- 

25 lance be preserved, he must sink at last. 

This necessity of perishing might have been expected 
to sadden the gay, and intimidate the daring, at least 
to keep the melancholy and timorous in perpetual tor- 
ments, and hinder them from any enjoyment of the 

30 varieties and gratifications which nature offered them 
as the solace of their labors; yet, in effect, none seemed 
less to expect destruction than those to whom it was 
most dreadful; they all had the art of concealing their 
danger from themselves ; and those who knew their in- 

35 ability to bear the sight of the terrors that embarrassed 
their way, took care never to look forward, but found 
some amusement for the present moment, and generally 



104 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

entertained themselves by playing with Hope, who was 
the constant associate of the voyage of life. 

Yet all that Hope ventured to promise, even to those 
whom she favored most, was, not that they should escape, 
but that they should sink last ; and with this promise 5 
every one was satisfied, though he laughed at the rest 
for seeming to believe it. Hope, indeed, apparently 
mocked the credulity of her companions; for, in pro- 
portion as their vessels grew leaky, she redoubled her 
assurances of safety ; and none were more busy in 10 
making provisions for a long voyage, than they whom 
all but themselves saw likely to perish soon by irrepara- 
ble decay. 

In the midst of the current of life was the Gulf of 
Intemperance, a dreadful whirlpool, interspersed with 15 
rocks, of which the pointed crags were concealed under 
water, and the tops covered with herbage, on which 
Ease spread couches of repose, and with shades, where 
Pleasure warbled the song of invitation. Within sight 
of these rocks all who sailed on the ocean of life must 20 
necessarily pass. Reason, indeed, was always at hand 
to steer the passengers through a narrow outlet by 
which they might escape; but very few could, by her 
entreaties or remonstrances, be induced to put the rud- 
der into her hand, without stipulating that she should 25 
approach so near unto the rocks of Pleasure, that they 
might solace themselves with a short enjoyment of that 
delicious region, after which they always determined 
to pursue their course without any other deviation. 

Reason was too often prevailed upon so far by these 30 
promises, as to venture her charge within the eddy of 
the Gulf of Intemperance ; where, indeed, the circum- 
volution was weak, but yet interrupted the course of 
the vessel, and drew it, by insensible rotations, towards 
the centre. She then repented her temerity, and with 35 
all her force endeavored to retreat; but the draught of 
the gulf was generally too strong to be overcome; and 



THE RAMBLER 105 

the passenger, having danced in circles with a pleasing 
and giddy velocity, was at last overwhelmed and lost. 
Those few whom Reason was able to extricate gen- 
erally suffered so many shocks upon the points which 
5 shot out from the rocks of Pleasure, that they were 
unable to continue their course with the same strength 
and facility as before, but floated along timorously and 
feebly, endangered by every breeze, and shattered by 
every ruffle of the water, till they sunk, by slow degrees, 

10 after long struggles and innumerable expedients, always 
repining at their own folly, and warning others against 
the first approach of the Gulf of Intemperance. 

There were artists who professed to repair the breaches 
and stop the leaks of the vessels which had been shat- 

15 tered on the rocks of Pleasure. Many appeared to 
have great confidence in their skill, and some, indeed, 
were preserved by it from sinking, who had received only 
a single blow; but I remarked that few vessels lasted 
long which had been much repaired, nor was it found 

20 that the artists themselves continued afloat longer than 
those who had least of their assistance. 

The only advantage which, in the voyage of life, the 
cautious' had above the negligent was, that they sunk 
later, and more suddenly; for they passed forward till 

25 they had sometimes seen all those in whose company 
they had issued from the straits of infancy, perish in 
the way, and at last were overset by a cross breeze, 
without the toil of resistance, or the anguish of expecta- 
tion. But such as had often fallen against the rocks of 

30 Pleasure commonly subsided by sensible degrees, con- 
tended long with the encroaching waters, and harassed 
themselves by labors that scarce Hope herself could 
flatter with success. As I was looking upon the various 
fate of the multitude about me, I was suddenly alarmed 

35 with an admonition from some unknown power, * Gaze 
not idly upon others when thou thyself art sinking. 
Whence is this thoughtless tranquillity, when thou and 



106 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

they are equally endangered ? ? I looked, and seeing 
the Gulf of Intemperance before me, started and 
awaked. 

No. 108. Saturday, March 30, 1751 

Sapere aude ; 

Incipe. Qui recte Vivendi prorogat horam, 
Rusticus exspectat dum defluat amnis: at ille 
Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis cevum. 

— Hor. Ep. 1. 2. 40-43. 

Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise ; 

He who defers this work from day to day, 

Does on a river's bank expecting stay, 

Till the whole stream, which stopp'd him, should be gone, 

That runs, and as it runs, for ever will run on. 

— Cowley. 

An ancient poet, unreasonably discontented at the 
present state of things, which his system of opinions 5 
obliged him to represent in its worst form, has observed 
of the earth, ' that its greater part is covered by the 
uninhabitable ocean; that of the rest some is encumbered 
with naked mountains, and some lost under barren 
sands ; some scorched with unintermitted heat, and some 10 
petrified with perpetual frost ; so that only a few regions 
remain for the production of fruits, the pasture of cattle, 
and the accommodation of man/ ' 

The same observation may be transferred to the time 
allotted us in our present state. When we have deducted 15 
all that is absorbed in sleep, all that is inevitably appro- 
priated to the demands of nature, or irresistibly en- 
grossed by the tyranny of custom; all that passes in 
regulating the superficial decorations of life, or is given 
up in the reciprocations of civility to the disposal of 20 
others; all that is torn from us by the violence of dis- 
ease, or stolen imperceptibly away by lassitude and 
languor; we shall find that part of our duration very 
small of which we can truly call ourselves masters, 
or which we can spend wholly at our own choice. Many 25 
of our hours are lost in a rotation of petty cares, in 



THE RAMBLER 107 

a constant recurrence of the same employments; many 
of our provisions for ease or happiness are always 
exhausted by the present day; and a great part of our 
existence serves no other purpose than that of enabling 
5 us to enjoy the rest. 

Of the few moments which are left in our disposal, it 
may reasonably be expected that we should be so frugal, 
as to let none of them slip from us without some equiva- 
lent; and perhaps it might be found, that as the earth, 

10 however straitened by rocks and waters, is capable of 
producing more than all its inhabitants are able to con- 
sume, our lives, though much contracted by incidental 
distraction, would yet afford us a large space vacant 
to the exercise of reason and virtue; that we want not 

15 time, but diligence, for great performances; and that we 
squander much of our allowance, even while we think 
it sparing and insufficient. 

This natural and necessary comminution of our lives, 
perhaps, often makes us insensible , of the negligence 

20 with which we suffer them to slide away. We never 
consider ourselves as possessed at once of time sufficient 
for any great design, and therefore indulge ourselves 
in fortuitous amusements. We think it unnecessary 
to take an account of a few supernumerary moments, 

25 which, however employed, could have produced little ad- 
vantage, and which were exposed to a thousand chances 
of disturbance and interruption. 

It is observable, that, either by nature or by habit, 
our faculties are fitted to images of a certain extent, 

30 to which we adjust great things by division, and little 
things by accumulation. Of extensive surfaces we can 
only take a survey as the parts succeed one another; 
and atoms we cannot perceive till they are united into 
masses. Thus we break the vast periods of time into 

35 centuries and years ; and thus, if we would know the 
amount of moments, we must agglomerate them into 
days and weeks. 



108 SELECTIONS FEOM JOHNSON 

The proverbial oracles of our parsimonious ancestors 
have informed us that the fatal waste of fortune is by 
small expenses, by the profusion of sums too little 
singly to alarm our caution, and which we never suffer 
ourselves to consider together. Of the same kind is the 5 
prodigality of life; he that hopes to look back hereafter 
with satisfaction upon past years, must learn to know 
the present value of single minutes, and endeavor to let 
no particle of time fall useless to the ground. 

It is usual for those who are advised to the attainment 10 
of any new qualification, to look upon themselves as 
required to change the general course of their conduct, 
to dismiss business, and exclude pleasure, and to devote 
their days and nights to a particular attention. But all 
common degrees of excellence are attainable at a lower 15 
price; he that should steadily and resolutely assign to 
any science or language those interstitial vacancies which 
intervene in the most crowded variety of diversion or 
employment, would find every day new irradiations of 
knowledge, and discover how much more is to be hoped 20 
from frequency and perseverance, than from violent 
efforts and sudden desires; efforts which are soon re- 
mitted when they encounter difficulty, and desires which, 
if they are indulged too often, will shake off the author- 
ity of reason, and range capriciously from one object to 25 
another. 

The disposition to defer every important design to a 
time of leisure, and a state of settled uniformity, pro- 
ceeds generally from a false estimate of the human 
powers. If we except those gigantic and stupendous 30 
intelligences who are said to grasp a system by in- 
tuition, and bound forward from one series of conclu- 
sions to another, without regular steps through inter- 
mediate propositions, the most successful students make 
their advances in knowledge by short flights, between 35 
each of which the mind may lie at rest. For every 
single act of progression a short time is sufficient; and 



THE BAMBLER 109 

it is only necessary, that, whenever that time is afforded, 
it be well employed. 

Few minds will be long confined to severe and labori- 
ous meditation; and when a successful attack on know- 
Sledge has been made, the student recreates himself with 
the contemplation of his conquest, and forbears another 
incursion, till the new-acquired truth has become fa- 
miliar, and his curiosity calls upon him for fresh grati- 
fications. Whether the time of intermission is spent 

10 in company, or in solitude, in necessary business, or in 
voluntary levities, the understanding is equally ab- 
stracted from the object of inquiry; but perhaps, if 
it be detained by occupations less pleasing, it returns 
again to study with greater alacrity than when it is 

15 glutted with ideal pleasures, and surfeited with in- 
temperance of application. He that will not suffer him- 
self to be discouraged by fancied impossibilities may 
sometimes find his abilities invigorated by the necessity 
of exerting them in short intervals, as the force of a 

20 current is increased by the contraction of its channel. 
From some cause like this it has probably proceeded, 
that, among those who have contributed to the advance- 
ment of learning, many have risen to eminence in opposi- 
tion to all the obstacles which external circumstances 

25 could place in their way, amidst the tumult of business, 
the distresses of poverty, or the dissipations of a wan- 
dering and unsettled state. A great part of the life 
of Erasmus was one continual peregrination, ill sup- 
plied with the gifts of fortune, and led from city to 

30 city, and from kingdom to kingdom, by the hopes of 
patrons and preferment, hopes which always flattered 
and always deceived him; he yet found means, by un- 
shaken constancy, and a vigilant improvement of those 
hours which, in the midst of the most restless activity, 

35 will remain unengaged, to write more than another in 
the same condition would have hoped to read. Com- 
pelled by want to attendance and solicitation, and so 



110 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

much versed in common life, that he has transmitted to 
us the most perfect delineation of the manners of his 
age, he joined to his knowledge of the world such 
application to books, that he will stand for ever in the 
first rank of literary heroes. How this proficiency was 5 
obtained he sufficiently discovers, by informing us that 
the Praise of Folly, one of his most celebrated perform- 
ances, was composed by him on the road to Italy; • ne 
totum illud tempus, quo equo fuit insidendum, illiteratis 
f abulis tereretur ? — ' lest the hours which he was obliged 10 
to spend on horseback should be tattled away without 
regard to literature.' 

An Italian philosopher expressed in his motto, that 
1 time was his estate ' ; an estate, indeed, which will pro- 
duce nothing without cultivation, but will always abun- 15 
dantly repay the labors of industry, and satisfy the 
most extensive desires, if no part of it be suffered to 
lie waste by negligence, to be overrun with noxious 
plants, or laid out for show rather than for use. 

No. 117. Tuesday, April 30, 1751 

*0<r<rav en OvAvjU7ro) fxrjfxaarav 0e'/uev, avrap en' "Ocrar} 

n^A.ioi' eivoo-t^vAAov, Iv ovpavbs dju/SaTos eiT?.-— HOM. Od. n. 315. 16. 

The gods they challenge, and affect the skies : 

Hcav'd on Olympus tott'ring Ossa stood ; 

On Ossa, Pelion nods with all his wood. — Pope. 

to the rambler 
Sir : 20 

Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learn- 
ing than the disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and 
vilify what they cannot comprehend. All industry must 
be excited by hope; and as the student often proposes 
no other reward to himself than praise, he is easily 25 
discouraged by contempt and insult. He who brings 
with him into a clamorous multitude the timidity of 
recluse speculation, and has never hardened his front 



THE BAMBLER 111 

in public life, or accustomed his passions to the vicis- 
situdes and accidents, the triumphs and defeats of mixed 
conversation, will blush at the stare of petulant in- 
credulity, and suffer himself to be driven by a burst of 
Slaughter from the fortresses of demonstration. The 
mechanist will be afraid to assert, before hardy contra- 
diction, the possibility of tearing down bulwarks with 
a silk- worm's thread; and the astronomer of relating 
the rapidity of light, the distance of the fixed stars, 

10 and the height of the lunar mountains. 

If I could by any efforts have shaken off this coward- 
ice, I had not sheltered myself under a borrowed name, 
nor applied to you for the means of communicating to 
the public the theory of a garret; a subject which, ex- 

15 cept some slight and transient strictures, has been 
hitherto neglected by those who were best qualified to 
adorn it, either for want of leisure to prosecute the 
various researches in which a nice discussion must 
engage them, or because it requires such diversity of 

20 knowledge, and such extent of curiosity, as is scarcely 
to be found in any single intellect : or perhaps others 
foresaw the tumults which would be raised against them, 
and confined their knowledge to their own breasts, and 
abandoned prejudice and folly to the direction of chance. 

25 That the professors of literature generally reside in 
the highest stories, has been immemorially observed. 
The wisdom of the ancients was well acquainted with the 
intellectual advantages of an elevated situation: why 
else were the Muses stationed on Olympus or Parnassus 

30 by those who could with equal right have raised them 
bowers in the vale of Tempe, or erected their altars 
among the flexures of Meander? Why was Jove him- 
self nursed upon a mountain ? Or why did the goddesses, 
when the prize of beauty was contested, try the cause 

35 upon the top of Ida? Such were the fictions by which 
the great masters of the earlier ages endeavored to in- 
culcate to posterity the importance of a garret, which, 



112 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

though they had been long obscured by the negligence 
and ignorance of succeeding times, were well enforced 
by the celebrated symbol of Pythagoras, ave/utiv weovtov 
ttjv 7ix<i> TcpocuvvEL — ' when the wind blows, worship its 
echo/ This could not but be understood by his dis- 5 
ciples as an inviolable injunction to live in a garret, 
which I have found frequently visited by the echo and 
the wind. Nor was the tradition wholly obliterated in 
the age of Augustus, for Tibullus evidently congratu- 
lates himself upon his garret, not without some allusion 10 
to the Pythagorean precept: 

Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem- 



Aut, gelidas hybernus aquas cum fuderit auster, 
Securum somnos, imbre juvante, sequi! 

How sweet is sleep to pass the careless hours, 
Lull'd by the beating winds and dashing show'rs! 

And it is impossible not to discover the fondness of 15 
Lucretius, an earlier writer, for a garret, in his descrip- 
tion of the lofty towers of serene learning, and of the 
pleasure with which a wise man looks down upon the 
confused and erratic state of the world moving below 
him : 20 

Bed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere 
Edita doctrina sapientum templa sarena; 
Despicere unde queas alios, passimque videre 
Errare, atque viam palantis quwrere vitw. 

-'Tis sweet thy lab'ring steps to guide 



To virtue's heights, with wisdom well supplied, 
And all the magazines of learning fortified : 
From thence to look below on human kind, 
Bewilder'd in the maze of life, and blind. — Dryden. 

The institution has, indeed, continued to our own 25 
time; the garret is still the usual receptacle of the phil- 
osopher and poet; but this, like many ancient customs, 
is perpetuated only by an accidental imitation, without 
knowledge of the original reason for which it was estab- 
lished. 30 

Causa latet; res est notissima. 

The cause is secret, but th' effect is known. — Addison. 



THE RAMBLER 113 

Conjectures have, indeed, been advanced concerning 
these habitations of literature, but without much satis- 
faction to the judicious inquirer. Some have imagined 
that the garret is generally chosen by the wits as most 
5 easily rented; and concluded that no man rejoices in 
his aerial abode, but on the days of payment. Others 
suspect that a garret is chiefly convenient, as it is 
remoter than any other part of the house from the 
outer door, which is often observed to be infested by 

10 visitants, who talk incessantly of beer, or linen, or a 
coat, and repeat the same sounds every morning, and 
sometimes again in the afternoon, without any varia- 
tion, except that they grow daily more importunate 
and clamorous, and raise their voices in time from 

15 mournful murmurs to raging vociferations. This eternal 
monotony is always detestable to a man whose chief 
pleasure is to enlarge his knowledge, and vary his ideas. 
Others talk of freedom from noise, and abstraction 
from common business or amusements; and some, yet 

20 more visionary, tell us that the faculties are enlarged 
by open prospects, and that the fancy is more at liberty, 
when the eye ranges without confinement. 

These conveniences may perhaps all be found in a 
well-chosen garret; but surely they cannot be supposed 

25 sufficiently important to have operated unvariably upon 
different climates, distant ages, and separate nations. 
Of an universal practice, there must still be presumed 
an universal cause, which, however recondite and ab- 
struse, may be perhaps reserved to make me illustrious 

30 by its discovery, and you by its promulgation. 

It is universally known that the faculties of the 
mind are invigorated or weakened by the state of the 
body, and that the body is in a great measure regulated 
by the various compressions of the ambient element. 

35 The effects of the air in the production or cure of cor- 
poreal maladies have been acknowledged from the time 
of Hippocrates; but no man has yet sufficiently con- 



114 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

sidered how far it may influence the operations of the 
genius, though every day affords instances of local 
understanding, of wits and reasoners, whose faculties 
are adapted to some single spot, and who, when they 
are removed to any other place, sink at once into silence 5 
and stupidity. I have discovered, by a long series of 
observations, that invention and elocution suffer great 
impediments from dense and impure vapors, and that 
the tenuity of a defecated air at a proper distance from 
the surface of the earth, accelerates the fancy, and sets 10 
at liberty those intellectual powers which were before 
shackled by too strong attraction, and unable to expand 
themselves under the pressure of a gross atmosphere. 
I" have found dullness to quicken into sentiment in a 
thin ether, as water, though not very hot, boils in a 15 
receiver partly exhausted; and heads, in appearance 
empty, have teemed with notions upon rising ground, 
as the flaccid sides of a football would have swelled out 
into stiffness and extension. 

For this reason I never think myself qualified to 20 
judge decisively of any man's faculties whom I have 
only known in one degree of elevation; but take some 
opportunity of attending him from the cellar to the 
garret, and try upon him all the various degrees of 
rarefaction and condensation, tension and laxity. If he 25 
is neither vivacious aloft, nor serious below, I then 
consider him as hopeless; but as it seldom happens 
that I do not find the temper to which the texture of 
his brain is fitted, I accommodate him in time with 
a tube of mercury, first marking the points most favor- 30 
able to his intellects, according to rules which I have 
long studied, and which I may, perhaps, reveal to man- 
kind in a complete treatise of barometrical pneuma- 
tology. 

Another cause of the gaiety and sprightliness of the 35 
dwellers in garrets is probably the increase of that verti- 
ginous motion with which we are carried round by the 





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THE RAMBLER 115 

diurnal revolution of the earth. The power of agitation 
upon the spirits is well known; every man has felt 
his heart lightened in a rapid vehicle, or on a galloping 
horse; and nothing is plainer, than that he who towers 
5 to the fifth story is whirled through more space by 
every circumrotation, than another that grovels upon 
the ground-floor. The nations between the tropics are 
known to be fiery, inconstant, inventive, and fanciful; 
because, living at the utmost length of the earth's diain- 

lOeter, they are carried about with more swiftness than 
those whom nature has placed nearer to the poles; 
and therefore, as it becomes a wise man to struggle with 
the inconveniencies of his country, whenever celerity 
and acuteness are requisite, we must actuate our langor 

15 by taking a few turns round the centre in a garret. 
If you imagine that I ascribe to air and motion 
effects which they cannot produce, I desire you to con- 
sult your own memory, and consider whether you have 
never known a man acquire reputation in his garret, 

20 which, when fortune or a patron had placed him upon 
the first floor, he was unable to maintain; and who 
never recovered his former vigor of understanding, till 
he was restored to his original situation. That a garret 
will make every man a wit, I am very far from suppos- 

25 ing ; I know there are some who would continue block- 
heads even on the summit of the Andes, or on the 
peak of Tenerifre. But let not any man be considered 
as unimprovable till this potent remedy has been tried; 
for perhaps he was formed to be great only in a garret, 

30 as the joiner of Aretaeus was rational in no other place 
but his own shop. 

I think a frequent removal to various distances from 
the centre so necessary to a just estimate of intellectual 
abilities, and consequently of so great use in education, 

35 that if I hoped that the public could be persuaded to 
so expensive an experiment, I would propose, that there 
should be a cavern dug, and a tower erected, like those 



116 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

which Bacon describes in Solomon's house, for the 
expansion and concentration of understanding, accord- 
ing to the exigence of different employments or constitu- 
tions. Perhaps some that fume away in meditations 
upon time and space in the tower, might compose tables 5 
of interest at a certain depth; and he that upon level 
ground stagnates in silence, or creeps in narrative, 
might, at the height of half a mile, ferment into merri- 
ment, sparkle with repartee, and froth with declamation. 

Addison observes, that we may find the heat of Virgil's 10 
climate in some lines of his Georgic: so, when I read 
a composition, I immediately determine the height of 
the* author's habitation. As an elaborate performance 
is commonly said to smell of the lamp, my commenda- 
tion of a noble thought, a sprightly sally, or a bold 15 
figure, is to pronounce it fresh from the garret; an 
expression w 7 hich would break from me upon the perusal 
of most of your papers, did I not believe that you 
sometimes quit the garret, and ascend into the cock- 
loft. 20 

Hypertatus. 

No. 120. Saturday, May 11, 1751 

Redditum Cyri solio Phraaten, 
Dissidens plebi, numero beat or um 
Exlmit virtus, populumque falsis 

Dedocet uti 
Vocibus. Hor. Od. 2. 2. 17-21. 

True virtue can the crowd unteach 

Their false mistaken forms of speech ; 

Virtue, to crowds a foe profest, 

Disdains to number with the blest 

Phraates, by his slaves ador'd, 

And to the Parthian crown restor'd.— Francis. 

In the reign of Jenghiz Can, conqueror of the East, 
in the city of Samarcand, lived Nouradin the merchant, 
renowned throughout all the regions of India for the 
extent of his commerce, and the integrity of his dealings. 25 
His warehouses were filled with all the commodities of 



THE RAMBLER 117 

the remotest nations; every rarity of nature, every 
curiosity of art, whatever was valuable, whatever was 
useful, hasted to his hand. The streets were crowded 
with his carriages; the sea was covered with his ships; 
5 the streams of Oxus were wearied with conveyance, 
and every breeze of the sky wafted wealth to Nouradin. 
At length Nouradin felt himself seized with a slow 
malady, which he first endeavored to divert by applica- 
tion, and afterwards to relieve by luxury and indul- 

10 gence ; but finding his strength every day less, he was 
at last terrified, and called for help upon the sages 
of physic; they filled his apartments with alexipharmics, 
restoratives, and essential virtues; the pearls of the 
ocean were dissolved, the spices of Arabia were dis- 

15 tilled, and all the powers of nature were employed 
to give new spirits to his nerves, and new balsam to 
his blood. Nouradin was for some time amused with 
promises, invigorated with cordials, or soothed with 
anodynes; but the disease preyed upon his vitals, and 

20 he soon discovered with indignation, that health was 
not to be bought. He was confined to his chamber, 
deserted by his physicians, and rarely visited by his 
friends; but his unwillingness to die flattered him long 
with hopes of life. 

25 At length, having passed the night in tedious languor, 
he called to him Almamoulin, his only son, and dis- 
missing his attendants, ' My son/ says he, ' behold here 
the weakness and fragility of man; look backward a 
few days, thy father was great and happy, fresh as 

30 the vernal rose, and strong as the cedar of the moun- 
tain; the nations of Asia drank his dews, and art and 
commerce delighted in his shade. Malevolence beheld 
me, and sighed : " His root," she cried, " is fixed in the 
depths; it-is watered by the fountains of Oxus; it sends 

35 out branches afar, and bids defiance to the blast ; pru- 
dence reclines against his trunk, and prosperity dances 
on his top." Now, Almamoulin, look upon me wither- 



118 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

ing and prostrate; look upon roe, and attend. I have 
trafficked, I have prospered, I have rioted in gain; 
my house is splendid, my servants are numerous; yet 
I displayed only a small part of my riches; the rest, 
which I was hindered from enjoying by the fear of 5 
raising envy, or tempting rapacity, I have piled in 
towers, I have buried in caverns, I have hidden in 
secret repositories, which this scroll will discover. My 
purpose was, after ten months more spent in commerce, 
to have withdrawn my wealth to a safer country ; to 10 
have given seven years to delight and festivity, and 
the remaining part of my days to solitude and repent- 
ance; but the hand of death is upon me; a frigorific 
torpor encroaches upon my veins; I am now leaving 
the produce of my toil, which it must be thy business 15 
to enjoy with wisdom. 7 The thought of leaving his 
wealth filled Nouradin with such grief, that he fell into 
convulsions, became delirious, and expired. 

Almamoulin, who loved his father, was touched 
awhile with honest sorrow, and sat two hours in pro- 20 
found meditation, without perusing the paper which 
he held in his hand. He then retired to his own cham- 
ber, as overborne with affliction, and there read the 
inventory of his new possessions, which swelled his heart 
with such transports, that he no longer lamented his 25 
father's death. He was now sufficiently composed to 
order a funeral of modest magnificence, suitable at once 
to the rank of Nouradin's profession, and the reputation 
of his wealth. The two next nights he spent in visiting 
the tower and the caverns, and found the treasures 30 
greater to his eye than to his imagination. 

Almamoulin had been bred to the practice of exact 
frugality, and had often looked with envy on the finery 
and expenses of other young men : he therefore believed 
that happiness was now in his power, since he could 35 
obtain all of which he had hitherto been accustomed . 
to regret the want. He resolved to give a loose to 



THE RAMBLER 119 

his desires, to revel in enjoyment, and feel pain or 
uneasiness no more. 

He immediately procured a splendid equipage, dressed 
his servants in rich embroidery, and covered his horses 
5 with golden caparisons. He showered down silver on 
the populace, and suffered their acclamations to swell 
him with insolence. The nobles saw him with anger, 
the wise men of the state combined against him, the 
leaders of armies threatened his destruction. Alnia- 

10 moulin was inf ormed of his danger : he put on the 
robe of mourning in the presence of his enemies, and 
appeased them with gold, and gems, and supplication. 
He then sought to strengthen himself, by an alliance 
with the princes of Tartary, and offered the price of 

15 kingdoms for a wife of noble birth. His suit was 
generally rejected, and his presents refused; but a 
princess of Astracan once condescended to admit him 
to her presence. She received him sitting on a throne, 
attired in the robe of royalty, and shining with the 

20 jewels of Golconda; command sparkled in her eyes, 
and dignity towered on her forehead. Almamoulin ap- 
proached and trembled. She saw his confusion and dis- 
dained him. i How/ says she, ' dares the wretch hope 
my obedience, who thus shrinks at my glance? Retire, 

25 and enjoy thy riches in sordid ostentation ; thou wast 
born to be wealthy, but never canst be great/ 

He then contracted his desires to more private and 
domestic pleasures. He built palaces, he laid out gar- 
dens, he changed the face of the land, he transplanted 

30 forests, he levelled mountains, opened prospects into 
distant regions, poured fountains from the tops of tur- 
rets, and rolled rivers through new channels. 

These amusements pleased him for a time ; but languor 
and weariness soon invaded him. His bowers lost their 

35 fragrance, and the waters murmured without notice. He 
purchased large tracts of land in distant provinces, adorned 
them with houses of pleasure, and diversified them with 



120 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

accommodations for different seasons. Change of place 
at first relieved his satiety, but all the novelties of 
situation were soon exhausted; he found his heart va- 
cant, and his desires, for want of external objects, 
ravaging himself. 5 

He therefore returned to Samarcand, and set open 
his doors to those whom idleness sends out in search 
of pleasure. His tables were always covered with deli- 
cacies; wines of every vintage sparkled in his bowls, 
and his lamps scattered perfumes. The sound of the 10 
lute, and the voice of the singer, chased away sadness; 
every hour was crowded with pleasure; and the day 
ended and began with feasts and dances, and revelry 
and merriment. Almamoulin cried out : ' I have at last 
found the use of riches ; I am surrounded by com- 15 
panions, who view my greatness without envy; and I 
enjoy at once the raptures of popularity, and the safety 
of an obscure station. What trouble can he feel, whom 
all are studious to please, that they may be repaid with 
pleasure ? What danger can he dread, to whom every 20 
man is a friend? ' 

Such were the thoughts of Almamoulin, as he looked 
down from a gallery upon the gay assembly, regaling 
at his expense; but in the midst of this soliloquy, an 
officer of justice entered the house, and, in the form of 25 
legal citation, summoned Almamoulin to appear before 
the emperor. The guests stood awhile aghast, then stole 
imperceptibly away, and he was led off without a single 
voice to witness his integrity. He now found one of 
his most frequent visitants accusing him of treason, in 30 
hopes of sharing his confiscation; yet, unpatronized and 
unsupported, he cleared himself by the openness of 
innocence, and the consistence of truth; he was dis- 
missed with honor, and his accuser perished in prison. 

Almamoulin now perceived with how little reason he 35 
had hoped for justice or fidelity from those who live 
only to gratify their senses; and, being now weary 



THE RAMBLER 121 

with vain experiments upon life and fruitless researches 
after felicity, he had recourse to a sage, who, after 
spending his youth in travel and observation, had re- 
tired from all human cares, to a small habitation on 
5 the banks of Oxus, where he conversed only with such 
as solicited his counsel. ' Brother,' said the philosopher, 
1 thou hast suffered thy reason to be deluded by idle 
hopes, and fallacious appearances. Having long looked 
with desire upon riches, thou hadst taught thyself to 

10 think them more valuable than nature designed them, 
and to expect from them what experience has now 
taught thee that they cannot give. That they do not 
confer wisdom, thou mayest be convinced, by consider- 
ing at how dear a price they tempted thee, upon thy 

15 first entrance into the world, to purchase the empty 
sound of vulgar acclamation. That they cannot bestow 
fortitude or magnanimity, that man may be certain 
who stood trembling at Astracan before a being not 
naturally superior to himself. That they will not sup- 

20 ply unexhausted pleasure, the recollection of forsaken 
palaces, and neglected gardens, will easily inform thee. 
That they rarely purchase friends, thou didst soon dis- 
cover, when thou wert left to stand thy trial uncounte- 
nanced and alone. Yet think not riches useless; there 

25 are purposes to which a wise man may be delighted to 
apply them; they may, by a rational distribution to 
those who want them, ease the pains of helpless disease, 
still the throbs of restless anxiety, relieve innocence from 
oppression, and raise imbecility to cheerfulness and 

30 vigor. This they will enable thee to perform, and this 
will afford the only happiness ordained for our present 
state — the confidence of divine favor, and the hope of 
future rewards/ 



122 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

No. 134. Saturday, June 29, 1751 

Quis scit, an adiciant liodiernce crastina summed 
Tern-pora Di superi? — Hor. Od. 4. 7. 17. . 

Who knows if Heav'n, with ever-bounteous pow'r, 
Shall add to-morrow to the present hour? — Francis. 

I sat yesterday morning employed in deliberating on 
which, among the various subjects that occurred to my 
imagination, I should bestow the paper of to-day. After 
a short effort of meditation by which nothing was deter- 
mined, I grew every moment more irresolute, my ideas 5 
wandered from the first intention, and I rather wished 
to think, than thought, upon any settled subject; till 
at "last I was awakened from this dream of study by 
a summons from the press; the time was come for 
which I had been thus negligently purposing to pro- 10 
vide, and, however dubious or sluggish, I was now 
necessitated to write. 

Though to a writer whose design is so comprehensive 
and miscellaneous, that he may accommodate himself 
with a topic from every scene of life, or view of nature, 15 
it is no great aggravation of his task to be obliged 
to a sudden composition; yet I could not forbear to 
reproach myself for having so long neglected what was 
unavoidably to be done, and of which every moment's 
idleness increased the difficulty. There was, however, 20 
some pleasure in reflecting that I, who had only trifled 
till diligence was necessary, might still congratulate 
myself upon my superiority to multitudes, who have 
trifled till diligence is vain; who can by no degree of 
activity or resolution recover the opportunities which 25 
have slipped away; and who are condemned by their 
own carelessness to hopeless calamity and barren sorrow. 

The folly of allowing ourselves to delay what we know 
cannot be finally escaped, is one of the general weak- - 
nesses which, in spite of the instruction of moralists, 30 
and the remonstrances of reason, prevail to a greater 



THE EAMBLEB 123 

or less degree in every mind; even they who most 
steadily withstand it, find it, if not the most violent, 
the most pertinacious of their passions, always renew- 
ing its attacks, and though often vanquished, never 
5 destroyed. 

It is indeed natural to have particular regard to the 
time present, and to be most solicitous for that which 
is by its nearness enabled to make the strongest im- 
pressions. When therefore any sharp pain is to be 

10 suffered, or any formidable danger to be incurred, we 
can scarcely exempt ourselves wholly from the seduce- 
ments of imagination; we readily believe that another 
day will bring some support or advantage which we 
now want; and are easily persuaded, that the moment 

15 of necessity, which we desire never to arrive, is at a 
great distance from us. 

Thus life is languished away, in the gloom, of anxiety, 
and consumed in collecting resolution which the next 
morning dissipates; in forming purposes which we 

20 scarcely hope to keep, and reconciling ourselves to our 
own cowardice by excuses, which, while we admit them, 
we know to be absurd. Our firmness is, by the con- 
tinual contemplation of misery, hourly impaired; every 
submission to our fear enlarges its dominion; we not 

25 only waste that time in which the evil we dread might 
have been suffered and surmounted, but even where 
procrastination produces no absolute increase of our diffi- 
culties, make them less superable to ourselves by ha- 
bitual terrors. When evils cannot be avoided, it is 

30 wise to contract the interval of expectation; to meet 
the mischiefs which will overtake us if we fly; and 
and suffer only their real malignity, without the con- 
flicts of doubt and anguish of anticipation. 

To act is far easier than to suffer; yet we every day 

35 see the progress of life retarded by the vis inertia, the 
mere repugnance to motion, and find multitudes repin- 
ing at the want of that which nothing but idleness 



124 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

hinders them from enjoying. The case of Tantalus, in 
the region of poetic punishment, was somewhat to be 
pitied, because the fruits that hung about him retired 
from his hand; but what tenderness can be claimed 
by those who, though perhaps they suffer the pains of 5 
Tantalus, will never lift their hands for their own 
relief? 

There is nothing more common among this torpid 
generation than murmurs and complaints; murmurs at 
uneasiness which only vacancy and suspicion expose 10 
them to feel, and complaints of distresses which it is 
in their own power to remove. Laziness is commonly 
associated w T ith timidity. Either fear originally pro- 
hibits endeavors by infusing despair of success; or the 
frequent failure of irresolute struggles, and the constant 15 
desire of avoiding labor, impress by degrees false ter- 
rors on the mind. But fear, whether natural or ac- 
quired, when once it has full possession of the fancy, 
never fails to employ it upon visions of calamity, such 
as, if they are not dissipated by useful employment, 20 
will soon overcast it with horrors, and embitter life 
not only with those miseries by which all earthly beings 
are really more or less tormented, but with those which 
do not yet exist, and which can only be discerned by 
the perspicacity of cowardice. 25 

Among all who sacrifice future advantage to present 
inclination, scarcely any gain so little as those that 
suffer themselves to freeze in idleness. Others are cor- 
rupted by some enjoyment of more or less power to 
gratify the passions ; but to neglect our duties, merely 30 
to avoid the labor of performing them, a labor which 
is always punctually rewarded, is surely to sink under 
weak temptations. Idleness never can secure tran- 
quillity; the call of reason and of conscience will pierce 
the closest pavilion of the sluggard, and though it may 35 
not have force to drive him from his down, will be 
loud enough to hinder him from sleep. Those moments 



THE RAMBLER 125 

which he cannot resolve to make useful by devoting 
them to the great business of his being, will still be 
usurped by powers that will not leave them to his 
disposal; remorse and vexation will seize upon them, 
5 and forbid him to enjoy what he is so desirous to 
appropriate. 

There are other causes of inactivity incident to more 
active faculties and more acute discernment. He to 
whom many objects of pursuit arise at the same time, 

10 will frequently hesitate between different desires, till 
a rival has precluded him, or change his course as new 
attractions prevail, and harass himself without advanc- 
ing. He who sees different ways to the same end, will, 
unless he watches carefully over his own conduct, lay 

15 out too much of his attention upon the comparison of 
probabilities and the adjustment of expedients, and 
pause in the choice of his road till some accident inter- 
cepts his journey. He whose penetration extends to 
remote consequences, and who, whenever he applies his 

20 attention to any design, discovers new prospects of ad- 
vantage and possibilities of improvement, will not easily 
be persuaded that his project is ripe for execution; 
but will superadd one contrivance to another, endeavor 
to unite yarious purposes in one operation, multiply 

25 complications, and refine niceties, till he is entangled 
in his own scheme, and bewildered in the perplexity 
of various intentions. He that resolves to unite all the 
beauties of situation in a new purchase, must waste 
his life in roving to no purpose from province to prov- 

30ince. He that hopes in the same house to obtain every 
convenience may draw plans and study Palladio, but 
will never lay a stone. He will attempt a treatise on 
some important subject, and amass materials, consult 
authors, and study all the dependent and collateral parts 

35 of learning, but never conclude himself qualified to 
write. He that has abilities to conceive perfection, 
will not easily be content without it; and since perfec- 



126 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

tion cannot be reached, will lose the opportunity of 
doing well in the vain hope of unattainable excellence. 
The certainty that life cannot be long, and the proba- 
bility that it will be much shorter than nature allows, 
ought to awaken every man to the active prosecution of 5 
whatever he is desirous to perform. It is true, that no 
diligence can ascertain success; death may intercept the 
swiftest career; but he who is cut off in the execution 
of an honest undertaking, has at, least the honor of 
falling in his rank, and has fought the battle though 10 
he missed the victory. 

No. 137. Tuesday, July 9, 1751 

Bum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt. 

— Hon. Sat. 1. 2. 24. 

Whilst fools one vice condemn, 

They run into the opposite extreme. — Creech. 

That wonder is the effect of ignorance, has been 
often observed. The awful stillness of attention, with 
which the mind is overspread at the first view of an 
unexpected effect, ceases when we have leisure to dis- 15 
entangle complications and investigate causes. Wonder 
is a pause of reason, a sudden cessation of the mental 
progress, which lasts only while the understanding is 
fixed upon some single idea, and is at an end when it 
recovers force enough to divide the object into its parts, 20 
or mark the intermediate gradations from the first agent 
to the last consequence. 

It may be remarked with equal truth, that ignorance 
is often the effect of wonder. It is common for those 
who have never accustomed themselves to the labor of 25 
inquiry, nor invigorated their confidence by conquests 
over difficulty, to sleep in the gloomy quiescence of 
astonishment, without any effort to animate inquiry or 
dispel obscurity. What they cannot immediately con- 
ceive, they consider as too high to be reached, or too 30 
extensive to be comprehended; they therefore content 



THE RAMBLER 127 

themselves with the gaze of folly, forbear to attempt what 
they have no hopes of performing, and resign the pleas- 
ure of rational contemplation to more pertinacious study 
or more active faculties. 
5 Among the productions of mechanic art, many are 
of a form so different from that of their first materials, 
and many consist of parts so numerous and so nicely 
adapted to each other, that it is not possible to view 
them without amazement. But when we enter the shops 

10 of artificers, observe the various tools by which every 
operation is facilitated, and trace the progress of a 
manufacture through the different hands -that, in suc- 
cession to each other, contribute to its perfection, we 
soon discover that every single man has an easy task, 

15 and that the extremes, however remote, of natural rude- 
ness and artificial elegance, are joined by a regular 
concatenation of effects, of which every one is introduced 
by that which precedes it, and equally introduces that 
which is to follow. 

20 The same is the state of intellectual and manual per- 
formances. Long calculations or complex diagrams af- 
fright the timorous and unexperienced from a second 
view; but if we have skill sufficient to analyze them 
into simple principles, it will be discovered that our 

25 fear was groundless. ' Divide and conquer/ is a prin- 
ciple equally just in science as in policy. Complication 
is a species of confederacy, which, while it continues 
united, bids defiance to the most active and vigorous 
intellect; but of which every member is separately weak, 

30 and which may, therefore, be quickly subdued, if it can 
once be broken. 

The chief art of learning, as Locke has observed, is 
to attempt but little at a time. The widest excursions 
of the mind are made by short flights frequently re- 

35peated; the most lofty fabrics of science are formed 
by the continued accumulation of single propositions. 
It often happens, whatever be the cause, that im- 



128 SELECTIONS FBOM JOHNSON 

patience of labor, or dread of miscarriage, seizes those 
who are most distinguished for quickness of apprehen- 
sion; and that they who might with greatest reason 
promise themselves victory, are least willing to hazard 
the encounter. This diffidence, where the attention is 5 
not laid asleep by laziness, or dissipated by pleasure, 
can arise only from confused and general views, such 
as negligence snatches in haste, or from the disappoint- 
ment of the first hopes formed by arrogance without 
reflection. To expect that the intricacies of science will 10 
be pierced by a careless glance, or the eminences of fame 
ascended without labor, is to expect a particular privi- 
lege, a power denied to the rest of mankind; but to 
suppose that the maze is inscrutable to diligence, or 
the heights inaccessible to perseverance, is to submit 15 
tamely to the tyranny of fancy, and enchain the mind 
in voluntary shackles. 

It is the proper ambition of the heroes in literature 
to enlarge the boundaries of knowledge by discovering 
and conquering new regions of the intellectual world. 20 
To the success of such undertakings perhaps some de- 
gree of fortuitous happiness is necessary, which no man 
can promise or procure to himself; and therefore doubt 
and irresolution may be forgiven in him that ventures 
into the unexplored abysses of truth, and attempts to 25 
find his way through the fluctuations of uncertainty, 
and the conflicts of contradiction. But when nothing 
more is rehired than to pursue a path already beaten, 
and to trample obstacles which others have demol- 
ished, why should any man so much distrust his 30 
own intellect as to imagine himself unequal to the 
attempt ? 

It were to be wished that they who devote their lives 
to study would at once believe nothing too great for 
their attainment, and consider nothing as too little for 35 
their regard; that they would extend their notice alike 
to science and to life, and unite some knowledge of the 



THE RAMBLER 129 

present world to their acquaintance with past ages and 
remote events. 

Nothing has so much exposed men of learning to 
contempt and ridicule as their ignorance of things which 
5 are known to all but themselves. Those who have been 
taught to consider the institutions of the schools as 
giving the last perfection to human abilities, are sur- 
prised to see men wrinkled with study, yet wanting 
to be instructed in the minute circumstances of pro- 

lOpriety, or the necessary forms of daily transaction; and 
quickly shake off their reverence for modes of educa- 
tion which they find to produce no ability above the 
rest of mankind. 

i Books/ says Bacon, l can never teach the use of 

15 books/ The student must learn by commerce with man- 
kind to reduce his speculations to practice, and accom- 
modate his knowledge to the purposes of life. 

It is too common for those who have been bred to 
scholastic professions, and passed much of their time 

20 in academies where nothing but learning confers honors, 
to disregard every other qualification, and to imagine 
that they shall find mankind ready to pay homage to 
their knowledge, and to crowd about them for instruc- 
tion. They therefore step out from their cells into 

25 the open world with all the confidence of authority and 
dignity of importance; they look round about them at 
once with ignorance and scorn on a race of beings to 
whom they are equally unknown and equally contempti- 
ble, but whose manners they must imitate, and with 

30 whose opinions they must comply, if they desire to pass 
their time happily among them. 

To lessen that disdain with which scholars are in- 
clined to look on the common business of the world, and 
the unwillingness with which they condescend to learn 

35 what is not to be found in any system of philosophy, 
it may be necessary to consider, that, though admira- 
tion is excited by abstruse researches and remote discov- 



/ 



130 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

eries, yet pleasure is not given, nor affection conciliated, 
but by softer accomplishments, and qualities more easily 
communicable to those about us. He that can only con- 
verse upon questions about which only a small part 
of mankind has knowledge sufficient to make them curi- 5 
ous, must lose his days in unsocial silence, and live 
in the crowd of life without a companion. He that 
can only be useful on great occasions may die without 
exerting his abilities, and stand a helpless spectator of 
a thousand vexations which fret away happiness, and 10 
which nothing is required to remove but a little dexterity 
of conduct and readiness of expedients. 
- No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able 
to set him above the want of hourly assistance, or 
to extinguish the desire of fond endearments and tender 15 
officiousness ; and therefore no one should think it 
unnecessary to learn those arts by which friendship may 
be gained. Kindness is preserved by a constant recipro- 
cation of benefits or interchange of pleasures; but such 
benefits only can be bestowed, as others are capable to 20 
receive, and such pleasures only imparted, as others 
are qualified to enjoy. 

By this descent from the pinnacles of art no honor 
will be lost; for the condescensions of learning are al- 
ways overpaid by gratitude. An elevated genius em- 25 
ployed in little things, appears, to use the simile of 
Longinus, like the sun in his evening declination: he 
remits his splendor, but retains his magnitude, and 
pleases more though he dazzles less. 



THE RAMBLER 131 

No. 145. Tuesday, August 6, 1751 

Xon, si priores Alwonius tenet 

Sedes Homer us, PindariccB latent, 

CewQiie et Alcwi minaces, 

Stesichorique graves Camwnw. — Hor. Od. 4. 9. 5-8. 

What though the Muse her Homer thrones 

High above all the immortal quire ; 
Nor Pindar's raptures she disowns, 

Nor hides the plaintive Cean lyre ; 
Aleanis strikes the tyrant soul with dread, 
Nor yet is grave Stesichorus unread. — Feaxcis. 

It is allowed that vocations and employments of least 
dignity are of the most apparent use; that the meanest 
artisan or manufacturer contributes more to the accom- 
modation of life, than the profound scholar and argu- 
5mentative theorist; and that the public would suffer less 
present inconvenience from the banishment of philoso- 
phers than from the extinction of any common trade. 

Some have been so forcibly struck with this observa- 
tion, that they have, in the first warmth of their dis- 

10 eovery, thought it reasonable to alter the common dis- 
tribution of dignity, and ventured to condemn mankind 
of universal ingratitude. For justice exacts that those 
by whom we are most benefited should be most honored. 
And what labor can be more useful than that which 

15 procures to families and communities those necessaries 
which supply the wants of nature, or those conveniencies 
by which ease, security, and elegance are conferred? 

This is one of the innumerable theories which the first 
attempt to reduce them into practice certainly destroys. 

20 If we estimate dignity by immediate usefulness, agri- 
culture is undoubtedly the first and noblest science; 
yet we see the plough driven, the clod broken, the 
manure spread, the seeds scattered, and the harvest 
reaped, by men whom those that feed upon their in- 

2odustry will never be persuaded to admit into the same 
rank with heroes, or with sages; and who, after all 
the confessions which truth may extort in favor of 



132 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

their occupation, must be content to fill up the lowest 
class of the commonwealth, to form the base of the pyra- 
mid of subordination, and lie buried in obscurity them- 
selves, while they support all that is splendid, conspicu- 
ous, or exalted. 5 

It will be found upon a closer inspection, that this 
part of the conduct of mankind is by no means con- 
trary to reason or equity. Remuneratory honors are 
proportioned at once to the usefulness and difficulty of 
performances, and are properly adjusted by eompari- 10 
son of the mental and corporeal abilities which they 
appear to employ. That work, however necessary, 
-which is carried on only by muscular strength and 
manual dexterity, is not of equal esteem, in the con- 
sideration of rational beings, with the tasks that exer- 15 
cise the intellectual powers, and require the active vigor 
of imagination, or the gradual and laborious investiga- 
tions of reason. 

The merit of all manual occupations seems to ter- 
minate in the inventor; and surely the first ages can- 20 
not be charged with ingratitude; since those who civil- 
ized barbarians, and taught them how to secure them- 
selves from cold and hunger, were numbered amongst 
their deities. But these arts once discovered by philos- 
ophy, and facilitated by experience, are afterwards prac- 25 
tised with very little assistance from the faculties of 
the soul; nor is any thing necessary to the regular 
discharge of these inferior duties, beyond that rude ob- 
servation which the most sluggish intellect may practise, 
and that industry which the stimulations of necessity 30 
naturally enforce. 

Yet though the refusal of statues and panegyric to 
those who employ only their hands and feet in the 
service of mankind may be easily justified, I am far 
from intending to incite the petulance of pride, to jus- 35 
tify the superciliousness of grandeur, or to intercept 
any part of that tenderness and benevolence which, by 



THE RAMBLER 133 

the privilege of their common nature, one man may claim 
from another. 

That it would be neither wise nor equitable to dis- 
courage the husbandman, the laborer, the miner, or the 
5 smith, is generally granted ; but there is another race 
of beings equally obscure and equally indigent, who, 
because their usefulness is less obvious to vulgar ap- 
prehensions, live unrewarded and die unpitied, and who 
have been long exposed to insult without a defender, 

10 and to censure without an apologist. 

The authors of London were formerly computed by 
Swift at several thousands, and there is not any reason 
for suspecting that their number has decreased. Of 
these only a very few can be said to produce, or en- 

15 deavor to produce, new ideas, to extend any principle 
of science, or gratify the imagination with any un- 
common train of images or contexture of events; the 
rest, however laborious, however arrogant, can only be 
considered as the drudges of the pen, the manufacturers 

20 of literature, who have set up for authors, either with 
or without a regular initiation, and, like other artificers, 
have no other care than to deliver their tale of wares at 
the stated time. 

It has been formerly imagined that he who intends 

25 the entertainment or instruction of others must feel in 
himself some peculiar impulse of genius; that he must 
watch the happy minute in which his natural fire is 
excited, in which his mind is elevated with nobler senti- 
ments, enlightened with clearer views, and invigorated 

30 with stronger comprehension; that he must carefully se- 
lect his thoughts and polish his expressions; and animate 
his efforts with the hope of raising a monument of 
learning, which neither time nor envy shall be able 
to destroy. 

35 But the authors whom I am now endeavoring to 
recommend have been too long i hackneyed in the ways 
of men ' to indulge the chimerical ambition of im- 



134 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

mortality; they have seldom any claim to the trade of 
writing, but that they have tried some other without 
success ; they perceive no particular summons to com- 
position, except the sound of the clock; the} 7 have no 
other rule than the law or the fashion for admitting 5 
their thoughts or rejecting them; and about the opinion 
of posterity they have little solicitude, for their pro- 
ductions are seldom intended to remain in the world 
longer than a week. 

That such authors are not to be rewarded with praise 10 
is evident, since nothing can be admired when it ceases 
to exist; but surely, though they cannot aspire to honor, 
they may be exempted from ignominy, and adopted in 
that order of men which deserves our kindness, though 
not our reverence. These papers of the day, the 15 
Ephemerce of learning, have uses more adequate to the 
purposes of common life than more pompous and dura- 
ble volumes. If it is necessary for every man to be 
more acquainted with his contemporaries than with past 
generations, and to rather know the events which may 20 
immediately affect his fortune or quiet, than the revolu- 
tions of ancient kingdoms, in which he has neither pos- 
sessions nor expectations; if it be pleasing to hear of 
the preferment and dismission of statesmen, the birth 
of heirs, and the marriage of beauties, the humble 25 
author of journals and gazettes must be considered as 
a liberal dispenser of beneficial knowledge. 

Even the abridger, compiler, and translator, though 
their labors cannot be ranked with those of the diurnal 
historiographer, yet must not be rashly doomed to anni- 30 
hilation. Every size of readers requires a genius of 
correspondent capacity; some delight in abstracts and 
epitomes, because they want room in their memory for 
long details, and content themselves with effects, with- 
out inquiry after causes ; some minds are overpowered 35 
by splendor of sentiment, as some eyes are offended 
by a glaring light; such will gladly contemplate an 



THE RAMBLER 135 

author in an humble imitation, as we look without pain 
upon the sun in the water. 

As every writer has his use, every writer ought to 
have his patrons; and since no man, however high he 
5 may now stand, can be certain that he shall not be soon 
thrown down from his elevation by criticism or caprice, 
the common interest of learning requires that her sons 
should cease from intestine hostilities, and, instead of 
sacrificing each other in malice and contempt, endeavor 
10 to avert persecution from the meanest of their fra- 
ternity. 

No. 154. Saturday, September 7, 1751 

Tibi res antiques laudis et artis 

Ingredior, sanctos ausus recludere font en. 

— Virg. Georg. 2. 174, 5. 

For thee my tuneful accents will I raise, 
And treat of arts disclos'd in ancient days ; 
Once more unlock for thee the sacred spring. 

— Drydex. 

The direction of Aristotle to those that study politics 
is, first to examine and understand what has been written 
by the ancients upon government; then to cast their 

15 eyes round upon the world, and consider by what causes 
the prosperity of communities is visibly influenced, and 
why some are worse, and others better administered. 

The same method must be pursued by him who hopes 
to become eminent in any other part of knowledge. The 

20 first task is to search books, the next to contemplate 
nature. He must first possess himself of the intellectual 
treasures which the diligence of former ages has ac- 
cumulated, and then endeavor to increase them by his 
own collections. 

25 The mental disease of the present generation is im- 
patience of study, contempt of the great masters of 
ancient wisdom, and a disposition to rely wholly upon 
unassisted genius and natural sagacity. The wits of 
these happy days have discovered a way to fame, which 



136 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

the dull caution of our laborious ancestors durst never 
attempt; they cut the knots of sophistry, which it was 
formerly the business of years to untie, solve difficulties 
by sudden irradiations of intelligence, and comprehend 
long processes of argument by immediate intuition. 5 

Men who have flattered themselves into this opinion 
of their own abilities, look down on all who waste their 
lives over books, as a race of inferior beings, condemned 
by nature to perpetual pupilage, and fruitlessly endeavor- 
ing to remedy their barrenness by incessant cultivation, 10 
or succor their feebleness by subsidiary strength. They 
presume that none would be more industrious than 
they, if they were not more sensible of deficiencies ; 
and readily conclude, that he who places no confidence 
in his own powers, owes his modesty only to his weak- 15 
ness. 

It is, however, certain, that no estimate is more in 
danger of erroneous calculations than those by which 
a man computes the force of his own genius. It gen- 
erally happens at our entrance into the world, that, 20 
by the natural attraction of similitude, we associate 
with men like ourselves, young, sprightly, and ignorant, 
and rate our accomplishments by comparison with theirs ; 
when we have once obtained an acknowledged superiority 
over our acquaintances, imagination and desire easily 25 
extend it over the rest of mankind, and if no accident 
forces us into new emulations, we grow old, and die 
in admiration of ourselves. 

Vanity, thus confirmed in her dominion, readily 
listens to the voice of idleness, and soothes the slumber 30 
of life with continual dreams of excellence and great- 
ness. A man, elated by confidence in his natural vigor 
of fancy and sagacity of conjecture, soon concludes that 
he already possesses whatever toil and inquiry can con- 
fer. He then listens with eagerness to the wild objec- 35 
tions which folly has raised against the common means 
of improvement; talks of the dark chaos of indigested 



THE RAMBLER 137 

knowledge; describes the mischievous effects of hetero- 
geneous sciences fermenting in the mind; relates the 
blunders of lettered ignorance; expatiates on the heroic 
merit of those who deviate from prescription, or shake 
5 off authority; and gives vent to the inflations of his 
heart by declaring that he owes nothing to pedants and 
universities. 

All these pretensions, however confident, are very 
often vain. The laurels which superficial acuteness gains 

10 in triumphs over ignorance unsupported by vivacity, 
are observed by Locke to be lost, whenever real learning 
and rational diligence appear against her; the sallies 
of gaiety are soon repressed by calm confidence; and 
the artifices of sub tilt y are readily detected by those 

15 who, having carefully studied the question, are not easily 
confounded or surprised. 

But, though the contemner of books had neither been 
deceived by others nor himself, and was really born 
with a genius surpassing the ordinary abilities of man- 

20 kind ; yet surely such gifts of Providence may be more 
properly urged as incitements to labor, than encourage- 
ments to negligence. He that neglects the culture of 
ground naturally fertile, is more shamefully culpable 
than he whose field would scarcely recompense his 

25 husbandry. 

Cicero remarks, that not to know what has been trans- 
acted in former times, is to continue always a child. 
If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world 
must remain always in the infancy of knowledge. The 

30 discoveries of every man must terminate in his own 
advantage, and the studies of every age be employed on 
questions which the past generation had discussed and 
determined. We may with as little reproach borrow 
science as manufactures from our ancestors; and it 

35 is as rational to live in caves till our own hands have 
erected a palace, as to reject all knowledge of archi- 
tecture which our understandings will not supply. 



138 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

To the strongest and quickest mind it is far easier to 
learn than to invent. The principles of arithmetic and 
geometry may be comprehended by a close attention 
in a few days; yet who can flatter himself that the study 
of a long life would have enabled him to discover them, 5 
when he sees them yet unknown to so many nations, 
whom he cannot suppose less liberally endowed with 
natural reason than the Grecians or Egyptians? 

Every science was thus far advanced towards perfec- 
tion by the emulous diligence of contemporary students, 10 
and the gradual discoveries of one age improving on 
another. Sometimes unexpected flashes of instruction 
were struck out by the fortuitous collision of happy 
incidents, or an involuntary concurrence of ideas, in 
which the philosopher to whom they happened had no 15 
other merit than that of knowing their value, and trans- 
mitting, unclouded, to posterity, that light which had 
been kindled by causes out of his power. The happi- 
ness of these casual illuminations no man can promise 
to himself, because no endeavors can procure them ; and 20 
therefore, whatever be our abilities or application, we 
must submit to learn from others what perhaps would 
have lain hid forever from human penetration, had not 
some remote inquiry brought it to view; as treasures 
are thrown up by the plowman and the digger in the 25 
rude exercise of their common occupations. 

The man whose genius qualifies him for great under- 
takings, must at least be content to learn from books 
the present state of human knowledge; that he may not 
ascribe to himself the invention of arts generally known ; 30 
weary his attention with experiments of which the event 
has been long registered; and waste, in attempts which 
have already succeeded or miscarried, that time which 
might have been spent with usefulness and honor upon 
new undertakings. 35 

But, though the study of books is necessary, it is 
not sufficient to constitute literary eminence. He that 



THE RAMBLER 139 

wishes to be counted among the benefactors of posterity 
must add by his own toil to the acquisitions of his 
ancestors, and secure his memory from neglect by some 
valuable improvement. This can only be effected by 
5 looking out upon the wastes of the intellectual world, 
and extending the power of learning over regions yet 
undisciplined and barbarous; or by surveying more ex- 
actly her ancient dominions, and driving ignorance from 
the fortresses and retreats where she skulks undetected 

10 and undisturbed. Every science has its difficulties, which 
yet call for solution before we attempt new systems of 
knowledge; as every country has its forests and marshes, 
which it would be wise to cultivate and drain, before 
distant colonies are projected as a necessary discharge 

15 of the exuberance of inhabitants. 

No man ever yet became great by imitation. What- 
ever hopes for the veneration of mankind must have 
invention in the design or the execution; either the effect 
must itself be new, or the means by which it is pro- 

20 duced. Either truths hitherto unknown must be dis- 
covered, or those which are already known enforced by 
stronger evidence, facilitated by clearer method, or eluci- 
dated by brighter illustrations. 

Fame cannot spread wide or endure long that is not 

25 rooted in nature, and manured by art. That which 
hopes to resist the blast of malignity, and stand firm 
against the attacks of time, must contain in itself some 
original principle of growth. The reputation which 
arises from the detail or transposition of borrowed 

30 sentiments may spread for a while, like ivy on the 
rind of antiquity, but will be torn away by accident 
or contempt, and suffered to rot unheeded on the ground. 



140 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

No. 169. Tuesday, October 29, 1751 

Nee plateum cceclit, nee demorsos sapit ungues. 

— Peesius, Sat. 1. 106. 

No blood from bitten nails those poems drew ; 
But churn'd, like spittle, from the lips they flew. 

— Dryden. 

Natural historians assert that whatever is formed 
for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity. Thus 
the firmest timber is of tardy growth, and animals 
generally exceed each other in longevity, in proportion 
to the time between their conception and their birth. 5 

The same observation may be extended to the offspring 
of the mind. Hasty compositions, however they please 
at first by flowery luxuriance, and spread in the sun- 
shine of temporary favor, can seldom endure the change 
of seasons, but perish at the first blast of criticism, or 10 
frost of neglect. When Apelles was reproached with 
the paucity of his productions, and the incessant at- 
tention with which he retouched his pieces, he conde- 
scended to make no other answer than that i he painted 
for perpetuity/ 15 

No vanity can more justly incur contempt and in- 
dignation than that which boasts of negligence and 
hurry. For who can bear with patience the writer who 
claims such superiority to the rest of his species, as 
to imagine that mankind are at leisure for attention 20 
to his extemporary sallies, and that posterity will re- 
posite his casual effusions among the treasures of ancient 
wisdom ? 

Men have sometimes appeared of such transcendent 
abilities, that their slightest and most cursory perform- 25 
ances excel all that labor and study can enable meaner 
intellects to compose; as there are regions of which the 
spontaneous products cannot be equalled in other soils 
by care and culture. But it is no less dangerous for 
any man to place himself in this rank of understanding, 



THE RAMBLER 141 

and fancy that he is born to be illustrious without 
labor, than to omit the cares of husbandry, and expect 
from his ground the blossoms of Arabia. 

The greatest part of those who congratulate them- 
5 selves upon their intellectual dignity, and usurp the 
privileges of genius, are men whom only themselves 
would ever have marked out as enriched by uncommon 
liberalities of nature, or entitled to veneration and im- 
mortality on easy terms. This ardor of confidence is 

10 usually found among those who, having not enlarged 
their notions by books or conversation, are persuaded, 
by the partiality which we all feel in our own favor, 
that they have reached the summit of excellence, be- 
cause they discover none higher than themselves; and 

15 who acquiesce in the first thoughts that occur, because 
their scantiness of knowledge allows them little choice, 
and the narrowness of their views affords them no 
glimpse of perfection, of that sublime idea which human 
industry has from the first ages been vainly toiling to 

20 approach. They see a little, and believe that there 
is nothing beyond their sphere of vision, as the Patuecos 
of Spain, who inhabited a small valley, conceived the 
surrounding mountains to be the boundaries of the 
world. In proportion as perfection is more distinctly 

25 conceived, the pleasure of contemplating our own per- 
formances will be lessened; it may therefore be ob- 
served, that they who most deserve praise are often 
afraid to decide in favor of their own performances; 
they know how much is still wanting to their comple- 

30 tion, and wait with anxiety and terror the determination 
of the public. ' I please every one else/ says Tully, ' but 
never satisfy myself/ 

It has often been inquired, why, notwithstanding the 
advances of latter ages in science, and the assistance 

35 which the infusion of so many new ideas has given us, 
we fall below the ancients in the art of composition. 
Some part of their superiority may be justly ascribed 



142 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

to the graces of their language, from which the most 
polished of the present European tongues are nothing 
more than barbarous degenerations. Some advantage 
they might gain merely by priority, which put them in 
possession of the most natural sentiments, and left us 5 
nothing but servile repetition or forced conceits. But 
the greater part of their praise seems to have been 
the just reward of modesty and labor. Their sense of 
human weakness confined them commonly to one study, 
which their knowledge of the extent of every science 10 
engaged them to prosecute with indefatigable diligence. 
Among the writers of antiquity I remember none 
except Statius who ventures to mention the speedy pro- 
duction of his writings, either as an extenuation of his 
faults, or a proof of his facility. Nor did Statius, 15 
when he considered himself as a candidate for lasting 
reputation, think a closer attention unnecessary, but 
amidst all his pride and indigence, the two great hast- 
eners of modern poems, employed twelve years upon 
the Thebaid, and thinks his claim to renown proportion- 20 
ate to his labor. 

ThebaiSy multd cruciata limd, 
Tentat, auclaci -fide, Mantuanm 
Gandia fames. 

Polish'd with endless toil, my lays 
At length aspire to Mantuan praise. 

Ovid indeed apologizes in his banishment for the im- 25 
perfection of his letters, but mentions his want of leisure 
to polish them as an addition to his calamities; and 
was so far from imagining revisals and corrections un- 
necessary, that at his departure from Rome, he threw 
his Metamorphoses into the fire, lest he should be 30 
disgraced by a book that he could not hope to 
finish. 

It seems not often to have happened that the same 
writer aspired to reputation in verse and prose; and 



THE RAMBLER 143 

of those few that attempted such diversity of excellence, 
I know not that even one succeeded. Contrary charac- 
ters they never imagined a single mind able to support, 
and therefore no man is recorded to have undertaken 
5 more than one kind of dramatic poetry. 

What they had written they did not venture in their 
first fondness to thrust into the world, but, considering 
the impropriety of sending forth inconsiderately that 
which cannot be recalled, deferred the publication, if 

10 not nine years, according to the direction of Horace, 
yet till their fancy was cooled after the raptures of 
invention, and the glare of novelty had ceased to dazzle 
the judgment. 

There were hi those days no weekly or diurnal writers ; 

15 ' mult a dies, et multa litura ' — i much time and many ra- 
sures' — were considered as indispensable requisites; and 
that no other method of attaining lasting praise has 
been yet discovered, may be conjectured from the blotted 
manuscripts of Milton now remaining, and from the 

20 tardy emission of Pope's compositions, delayed more 
than once till the incidents to which they alluded were 
forgotten, till his enemies were secure from his satire, 
and, what to an honest mind must be more painful, 
his friends were deaf to his encomiums. 

25 To him whose eagerness of praise hurries his pro- 
ductions soon into the light many imperfections are 
unavoidable, even where the mind furnishes the ma- 
terials, as well as regulates their disposition, and noth- 
ing depends upon search or information. Delay opens 

30 new veins of thought, the subject dismissed for a time 
appears with a new train of dependent images, the acci- 
dents of reading or conversation supply new ornaments 
or allusions, or mere intermission of the fatigue of 
thinking enables the mind to collect new force, and 

35 make new excursions. But all those benefits come too 
late for him who, when he was weary with labor, 
snatched at the recompense, and gave his work to his 



144 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

friends and his enemies, as soon as impatience and pride 
persuaded him to conclude it. 

One of the most pernicious effects of haste is ob- 
scurity, He that teems with a quick succession of ideas, 
and perceives how one sentiment produces another, easily 5 
believes that he can clearly express what he so strongly 
comprehends; he seldom suspects his thoughts of em- 
barrassment, while he preserves in his own memory 
the series of connection, or his diction of ambiguity, 
while only one sense is present to his mind. Yet if 10 
he has been employed on an abstruse or complicated 
argument, he will find, when he has awhile withdrawn 
his mind, and returns as a new reader to his work, 
that he has only a conjectural glimpse of his own mean- 
ing, and that to explain it to those whom he desires 15 
to instruct, he must open his sentiments, disentangle 
his method, and alter his arrangement. 

Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation 
from which only absence can set them free; and every 
man ought to restore himself to the full exercise of his 20 
judgment, before he does that which he cannot do im- 
properly without injuring his honor and his quiet. 

No. 170. Saturday, November 2, 1751 

Confiteor, si quid prodest delicta fateri. 

— Ovid, Amores 2. 3. 3. 

I grant the charge ; forgive the fault confess'd. 
TO THE ft AMBLER 

Sir: 

I am one of those beings from whom many that 
melt at the sight of all other misery, think it meritorious 25 
to withhold relief; one whom the rigor of virtuous 
indignation dooms to suffer without complaint, and per- 
ish without regard; and whom I myself have formerly 
insulted in the pride of reputation and security of 
innocence. 30 

I am of a good family, but my father was burdened 



THE RAMBLER 145 

with more children than he could decently support. A 
wealthy relation, as he travelled from London to his 
country-seat, condescending to make him a visit, was 
touched with compassion of his narrow fortune, and 
5 resolved to ease him of part of his charge, by taking 
the care of a child upon himself. Distress on one side, 
and ambition on the other, were too powerful for 
parental fondness, and the little family passed in review 
before him, that he might make his choice. I was then 

10 ten years old, and, without knowing for what purpose 
I was called to my great cousin, endeavored to recom- 
mend myself by my best courtesy, sung him my pret- 
tiest song, told the last story that I had read, and so 
much endeared nryself by my innocence, that he de- 

loclared his resolution to adopt me, and to educate me 
with his own daughters. 

My parents felt the common struggles at the thought 
of parting, and i some natural tears they dropp'd, but 
wiped them soon.' They considered, not without that 

20 false estimation of the value of wealth which poverty 
long continued always produces, that I was raised to 
higher rank than they could give me, and to hopes of 
more ample fortune than they could bequeath. My 
mother sold some of her ornaments to dress me in such 

25 a manner as might secure me from contempt at my 
first arrival; and when she dismissed me, pressed me 
to her bosom with an embrace that I still feel, gave 
me some precepts of piety, which, however neglected, 
I have not forgotten, and uttered prayers for my final 

30 happiness, of which I have not yet ceased to hope that 
they will at last be granted. 

My sisters envied my new finery, and seemed not 
much to regret our separation; my father conducted me 
to the stage-coach with a_kirui-af cheerful tenderness ; ■ 

35 and in a very short time I was transported to splendid 
apartments, and a luxurious table, and grew familiar to 
show, noise, and gaiety. 



146 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

In three years my mother died, having implored a 
blessing on her family with her last breath. I had little 
opportunity to indulge a sorrow which there was none 
to partake with me, and therefore soon ceased to reflect 
much upon my loss. My father turned all his care upon 5 
his other children, whom some fortunate adventures and 
unexpected legacies enabled him, when he died four 
years after my mother, to leave in a condition above 
their expectations. 

I should have shared the increase of his fortune, and 10 
had once a portion assigned me in his will; but my 
cousin assuring him that all care for me was needless, 
since he had resolved to place me happily in the world, 
directed him to divide my part amongst my sisters. 

Thus I was thrown upon dependence without re- 15 
source. Being now at an age in which young women 
are initiated into company, I was no longer to be sup- 
ported in my former character but at considerable 
expense; so that partly lest I should waste money, and 
partly lest my appearance might draw too many com- 20 
pliments and assiduities, I was insensibly degraded from 
my equality, and enjoyed few privileges above the head 
servant but that of receiving no wages. 

I felt every indignity, but knew that resentment would 
precipitate my fall. I therefore endeavored to con- 25 
tinue my importance by little services and active offi- 
ciousness, and, for a time, preserved myself from neg- 
lect, by withdrawing all pretenses to competition, and 
studying to please rather than to shine. But my in- 
terest, notwithstanding this expedient, hourly declined, 30 
and my cousin's favorite maid began to exchange rep- 
artees with me, and consult me about the alterations 
of a east gown. 

I was now completely depressed; and, though I had 
seen mankind enough to know the necessity of outward 35 
cheerfulness, I often withdrew to my chamber to vent 
my grief, or turn my condition in my mind, and ex- 



THE RAMBLER 147 

amine by what means I might escape from perpetual 
mortification. At last my schemes and sorrows were 
interrupted by a sudden change of my relation's be- 
havior, who one day took an occasion, when we were 
5 left together in a room, to bid me suffer myself no 
longer to be insulted, but assume the place which he 
always intended me to hold in the family. He assured 
me that his wife's preference of her own daughters 
should never hurt me; and, accompanying his profes- 

lOsions with a purse of gold, ordered me to bespeak a 
rich suit at the mercer's, and to apply privately to him 
for money when I wanted it, and insinuate that my 
other friends supplied me, which he would take care to 
confirm. 

15 By this stratagem, which I did not then understand, 
he filled me with tenderness and gratitude, compelled me 
to repose on him as my only support, and produced a 
necessity of private conversation. He often appointed 
interviews at the house of an acquaintance, and some- 

20 times called on me with a coach, and carried me abroad. 
My sense of his favor, and the desire of retaining it, 
disposed me to unlimited complaisance; and, though 
I saw his kindness gTow every day more fond, I did 
not suffer any suspicion to enter my thoughts. At 

25 last the wretch took advantage of the familiarity which 
he enjoyed as my relation, and the submission which 
he exacted as my benefactor, to complete the ruin of 
an orphan, whom his own promises had made indigent, 
whom his indulgence had melted, and his authority sub- 

30 dued. 

I know not why it should afford subject of exultation 
to overpower on any terms the resolution, or surprise 
the caution of a girl; but of all the boasters that deck 
themselves in the spoils of innocence and beauty, they 

35 surely have the least pretensions to triumph who sub- 
mit to owe their success to some casual influence. They 
neither employ the graces of fancy, nor the force of 



148 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

understanding, in their attempts; they cannot please 
their vanity with the art of their approaches, the deli- 
cacy of their adulations, the elegance of their address, 
or the efficacy of their eloquence; nor applaud them- 
selves as possessed of any qualities by which affection 5 
is attracted. They surmount no obstacles, they defeat 
no rivals, but attack only those who cannot resist, and 
are often content to possess the body, without any 
solicitude tc ~in the heart. 

Many of those despicable wretches does my present 10 
acquaintance with infamy and wickedness enable me to 
number anions: the heroes of debauchery; reptiles whom 
their own s vants would have despised, had they not 
been their servants, and with whom beggary would 
have disdained intercourse, had she not been allured by 1 5 
hopes of relief. Many of the beings which are now 
rioting in taverns, or shivering in the streets, have been 
corrupted, not by arts of gallantry which stole gradu- 
ally upon the affections and laid prudence asleep, but 
by the fear of losing benefits which were never intended, 20 
or of incurring resentment which they could not escape; 
some have been frighted by masters, and some awed by 
guardians into ruin. 

Our crime had its usual consequence, and he soon per- 
ceived that I could not long continue in his family. 25 
I was distracted at the thought of the reproach which 
I now believed inevitable. He comforted me with hopes 
of eluding all discovery, and often upbraided me w T ith 
the anx ^ty which perhaps none but himself saw in 
my coun enance ; but at last mingled his assurances of 30 
protectic. and maintenance with menaces of total de- 
sertion, in the moments of perturbation I should 
suffer hi ecret to escape, or endeavor to throw on him 
any part f my infamy. 

Thus p: ssed the dismal hours, till my retreat could 35 
no longer )e delayed. It was pretended that my rela- 
tions had rent for me to a distant county, and I en- 



THE RAMBLER 149 

tered upon a state which shall be described in ray next 
letter. I am, &c. 

Misella. 



No. 171. Tuesday, November 5, 1751 

Tcedet cceli convexa tueri. — Vieg. Mn, 4. 451. 
Dark is the sun, and loathsome is the day. 

to the rambler 
Sir: 
5 Misella now sits down to continue her narrative. I 
am convinced that nothing would more pu verfully pre- 
serve youth from irregularity, or guard inexperience 
from seduction, than a just description of the condition 
into which the wanton plunges herself, and therefore 

10 hope that my letter may be a sufficient antidote to my 
example. 

After the distraction, hesitation, and delays which 
the timidity of guilt naturally produces, I was removed 
to lodgings in a distant part of the town, under one 

15 of the characters commonly assumed upon such occa- 
sions. Here being by my circumstances condemned to 
solitude, I passed most of my hours in bitterness and 
anguish. The conversation of the people with whom I 
was placed was not at all capable of engaging my at- 

20 tention. or dispossessing the reigning ideas. The books 
which I carried to my retreat were such as heightened 
my abhorrence of myself; for I was not so :ar aban- 
doned as to sink voluntarily into corruption, or en- 
deavor to conceal from my own mind the e ormity of 

25 my crime. 

My relation remitted none of his fondness? kit visited 
me so often, that I was sometimes afraid test his as- 
siduity should expose 'him to suspicion. T^henever he 
came he found me weeping, and was therefore less 

30 delightfully entertained than he expected.- After fre- 



150 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

quent expostulations upon the unreasonableness of my 
sorrow, and innumerable protestations of everlasting 
regard, he at last found that I was more affected with the 
loss of my innocence, than the danger of my fame, 
and that he might not be disturbed by my remorse, be- 5 
gan to lull my conscience with the opiates of irreligion. 
His arguments were such as my course of life has since 
exposed me often to the necessity of hearing, vulgar, 
empty, and fallacious; yet they at first confounded me 
by their novelty, filled' me with doubt and perplexity, 10 
and interrupted that peace which I began to feel from 
the sincerity of my repentance, without substituting 
any other support. I listened awhile to his impious 
gabble, but its influence was soon overpowered by nat- 
ural reason and early education, and the convictions 15 
which this new attempt gave me of his baseness com- 
pleted my abhorrence. I have heard of barbarians, 
who, when tempests drive ships upon their coast, decoy 
them to the rocks that they may plunder their lading, 
and have always thought that wretches, thus merciless 20 
in their depredations ought to be destroyed by a general 
insurrection of all social beings; yet how light is this 
guilt to the crime of him who, in the agitations of 
remorse, cuts away the anchor of piety, and, when he 
has drawn aside credulity from the paths of virtue, hides 25 
the light of heaven which would direct her to return. 
I had hitherto considered him as a man equally be- 
trayed with myself by the concurrence of appetite and 
opportunity; but I now saw with horror that he was 
contriving to perpetuate his gratification, and was de- 30 
sirous to fit me to his purpose by complete and radical 
corruption. 

To escape, however, was not yet in my power. I 
could support the expenses of my condition only by 
the continuance of his favor. He provided all that 35 
was necessary, and in a few weeks congratulated me 
upon my escape from the danger which we had both 



THE BAMBLEB 151 

expected with so much anxiety. I then began to remind 
him of his promise to restore me with my fame un- 
injured to the world. He promised me in general terms, 
that nothing should be wanting which his power could 
5 add to my happiness, but forbore to release me from 
my confinement. I knew how much my reception in 
the world depended upon my speedy return, and was 
therefore outrageously impatient of his delays, which 
I now perceived to be only artifices of lewdness. He 

10 told me at last, with an appearance of sorrow, that 
all hopes of restoration to my former state were for 
ever precluded; that chance had discovered my secret, 
and malice divulged it; and that nothing now remained, 
but to seek a retreat more private, where curiosity or 

15 hatred could never find us. 

The rage, anguish, and resentment, which I felt at 
this account are not to be expressed. I was in so much 
dread of reproach and infamy, which he represented as 
pursuing me with full cry, that I yielded myself im- 

20 plicitly to his disposal, and was removed, with a thou- 
sand studied precautions, through by-ways and dark 
passages, to another house, where I harassed him with 
perpetual solicitations for a small annuity that might 
enable me to live in the country in obscurity and inno- 

25 cence. 

This demand he at first evaded with ardent profes- 
sions, but in time appeared offended at my importunity 
and distrust; and having one day endeavored to soothe 
me with uncommon expressions of tenderness, when he 

30 found my discontent immoveable, left me with some in- 
articulate murmurs of anger. I was pleased that he 
was at last roused to sensibility, and expecting that 
at his next visit he would comply with my request, 
lived with great tranquillity upon the money in my 

35 hands, and was so much pleased with this pause of 
persecution, that I did not reflect how much his absence 
had exceeded the usual intervals, till I was alarmed 



152 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

with the danger of wanting subsistence. I then sud- 
denly contracted my expenses, but was unwilling to 
supplicate for assistance. Necessity, however, soon over- 
came my modesty or my pride, and I applied to him 
by a letter, but had no answer. I writ in terms more 5 
pressing, but without effect. I then sent an agent to 
inquire after him, who informed me that he had quitted 
his house, and was gone with his family to reside for 
some time upon his estate in Ireland. 

However shocked at this abrupt departure, I was yet 10 
unwilling to believe that he could wholly abandon me, 
and therefore, by the sale of my clothes I supported 
myself, expecting that every post would bring me relief. 
Thus I passed seven months between hope and dejection, 
in a gradual approach to poverty and distress, emaciated 15 
with discontent, and bewildered with uncertainty. At 
last my landlady, after many hints of the necessity of 
a new lover, took the opportunity of my absence to 
search my boxes, and missing some of my apparel, 
seized the remainder for rent, and led me to the door. 20 

To remonstrate against legal cruelty was vain; to 
supplicate obdurate brutality was hopeless. I went 
away I knew not whither, and wandered about without 
any settled purpose, unacquainted with the usual ex- 
pedients of misery, unqualified for laborious offices, 25 
afraid to meet an eye that had seen me before, and 
hopeless of relief from those who were strangers to 
my former condition. Night came on in the midst of 
my distraction, and I still continued to wander till 
the menaces of the watch obliged me to shelter myself 30 
in a covered passage. 

Next day I procured a lodging in the backward garret 
of a mean house, and employed my landlady to inquire 
for a service. My applications were generally rejected 
for want of a character. At length I was received at 35 
a draper's, but when it was known to my mistress that I 
had only one gown, and that of silk, she was of opinion 



THE RAMBLER 153 

that I looked like a thief, and without warning hurried 
me away. I then tried to support myself by my needle; 
and, by my landlady's recommendation, obtained a little 
work from a shop, and for three weeks lived without 
5 repining; but when my punctuality had gained me so 
much reputation, that I was trusted to make up a head 
of some value, one of my fellow-lodgers stole the lace, 
and I was obliged to fly from a prosecution. 

Thus driven again into the streets, I lived upon the 

10 least that could support me, and at night accommodated 
myself under pent-houses as well as I could. At length 
I became absolutely penniless, and having strolled all 
day without sustenance, was, at the close of evening, 
accosted by an elderly man with an invitation to a 

15 tavern. I refused him with hesitation ; he seized me 
by the hand, and drew me into a neighboring house, 
where, when he saw my face pale with hunger, and 
my eyes swelling with tears, he spurned me from him, 
and bade me cant and whine in some other place; he 

20 for his part would take care of his pockets. 

I still continued to stand in the way, having scarcely 
strength to walk further, when another soon addressed 
me in the same manner. When he saw the same tokens 
of calamity, he considered that I might be obtained at 

25 a cheap rate, and therefore quickly made overtures, 
which I had no longer firmness to reject. By this man 
I was maintained four months in penurious wickedness, 
and then abandoned to my former condition, from which 
I was delivered by another keeper. 

30 In this abject state I have now passed four years, 
the drudge of extortion and the sport of drunkenness; 
sometimes the property of one man, and sometimes the 
common prey of accidental lewdness; at one time tricked 
up for sale by the mistress of a brothel, at another 

35 begging in the streets to be relieved from hunger by 
wickedness; without any hope in the day but of finding 
some whom folly or excess may expose to my allure- 



154 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

ments, and without any reflections at night, but such 
as guilt and terror impress upon me. 

If those who pass their days in plenty and security 
could visit for an hour the dismal receptacles to which 
the prostitute retires from her nocturnal excursions, and 5 
see the wretches that lie crowded together, mad with 
intemperance, ghastly with famine, nauseous with filth, 
and noisome with disease; it would not be easy for any 
degree of abhorrence to harden them against compassion, 
or to repress the desire which they must immediately 10 
feel to rescue such numbers of human beings from a state 
so dreadful. 

It is said that in France they annually evacuate their 
streets, and ship their prostitutes and vagabonds to their 
colonies. If the women that infest this city had the 15 
same opportunity of escaping from their miseries, I 
believe very little force would be necessary; for who 
among them can dread any change? Many of us indeed 
are wholly unqualified for any but the most servile 
employments, and those perhaps would require the care 20 
of a magistrate to hinder them from following the same 
practices in another country; but others are only pre- 
cluded by infamy from reformation, and would gladly 
be delivered on any terms from the necessity of guilt, 
and the tyranny of chance. No place but a populous 25 
city can afford opportunities for open prostitution; and 
where the eye of justice can attend to individuals, those 
who cannot be made good may be restrained from mis- 
chief. For my part, I should exult at the privilege 
of banishment, and think myself happy in any region 30 
that should restore me once again to honesty and peace. 

I am, Sir, &c. 

Misella, 



THE RAMBLER 155 

No. 173. Tuesday, November 12, 1751 

Quo virtus, quo ferat error? 

—Hoe. Art of Poetry 308. 

Now say, where virtue stops, and vice begins. 

As any action or posture, long continued, will distort 
and disfigure the limbs; so the mind likewise is crippled 
and contracted by perpetual application to the same set 
of ideas. It is easy to guess the trade of an artisan by 
5 his knees, his fingers, or his shoulders; and there are 
few among men of the more liberal professions, whose 
minds do not carry the brand of their calling, or whose 
conversation does not quickly discover to what class 
of the community they belong. 

10 These peculiarities have been of great use in the 
general hostility which every part of mankind exercises 
against the rest, to furnish insults and sarcasms. Every 
art has its dialect, uncouth and ungrateful to all whom 
custom has not reconciled to its sound, and which there- 

15 fore becomes ridiculous b}^ a slight misapplication or 
unnecessary repetition. 

The general reproach with which ignorance revenges 
the superciliousness of learning is that of pedantry; 
a censure which every man incurs who has at any time 

20 the misfortune to talk to those who cannot understand 
him, and by which the modest and timorous are some- 
times frighted from the display of their acquisitions 
and the exertion of their powers. 

The name of a pedant is so formidable to young men 

25 when they first sally from their colleges, and is so 
liberally scattered by those who mean to boast their 
elegance of education, easiness of manners, and know- 
ledge of the world, that it seems to require particular 
consideration; since, perhaps, if it were once under- 

30 stood, many a heart might be freed from painful ap- 
prehensions, and many a tongue delivered from re- 
straint. 



156 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

Pedantry is the unseasonable ostentation of learning. 
It may be discovered either in the choice of a subject, 
or in the manner of treating it. He is undoubtedly 
guilty of pedantry, who, when he has made himself 
master of some abstruse and uncultivated part of know- 5 
ledge, obtrudes his remarks and discoveries upon those 
whom he believes unable to judge of his proficiency, 
and from whom, as he cannot fear contradiction, he 
cannot properly expect applause. . 

To this error the student is sometimes betrayed by 10 
the natural recurrence of the mind to its common em- 
ployment, by the pleasure which every man receives 
from the recollection of pleasing images, and the desire 
of dwelling upon topics on which he knows himself able 
to speak with justness. .But because we are seldom 15 
so far prejudiced in favor of each other, as to search 
out for palliations, this failure of politeness is imputed 
always to vanity; and the harmless collegiate, who, per- 
haps, intended entertainment and instruction, or at 
worst only spoke without sufficient reflection upon the 20 
character of his hearers, is censured as arrogant or over- 
bearing, and eager to extend his renown, in contempt 
of the convenience of society and the laws of conversa- 
tion. 

All discourse of which others cannot partake is not 25 
only an irksome usurpation of the time devoted to pleas- 
ure and entertainment, but, what never fails to excite 
very keen resentment, an insolent assertion of superi- 
ority, and a triumph over less enlightened understand- 
ings. The pedant is, therefore, not only heard with 30 
weariness, but malignity; and those who conceive them- 
selves insulted by his knowledge, never fail to tell with 
acrimony how injudiciously it was exerted. 

To avoid this dangerous imputation, scholars some- 
times divest themselves with too much haste of their 35 
academical formality, and in their endeavors to accom- 
modate their notions and their style to common con- 



THE RAMBLER 157 

cepticns, talk rather of any thing than of that which 
they understand, and sink into insipidity of sentiment 
and meanness of expression. 

There prevails among men of letters an opinion that 
5 all appearance of science is particularly hateful to 
women; and that therefore whoever desires to be well 
received in female assemblies must qualify himself by 
a total rejection of all that is serious, rational, or im- 
portant; must consider argument or criticism as per- 

lOpetually interdicted; and devote all his attention to 
trifles, and all his eloquence to compliment. 

Students often form their notions of the present gener- 
ation from the writings of the past, and are not very 
early informed of those changes which the gradual dif- 

15 fusion of knowledge, or the sudden caprice of fashion, 
produces in the world. Whatever might be the state of 
female literature in the last century, there is now no 
longer any danger lest the scholar should want an 
adequate audience at the tea-table; and whoever thinks 

20 it necessary to regulate his conversation by antiquated 
rules will be rather despised for his futility than 
caressed for his politeness. 

To talk intentionally in a manner above the com- 
prehension of those whom we address, is unquestionable 

25 pedantry ; but surely complaisance requires that no man 
should, without proof, conclude his company incapable 
of following him to the highest elevation of his fancy, 
or the utmost extent of his knowledge. It is always 
safer to err in favor of others than of ourselves, and 

30 therefore we seldom hazard much by endeavoring to 
excel. 

It ought at least to be the care of learning, when 
she quits her exaltation, to descend with dignity. Noth- 
ing is more despicable than the airiness and jocularity of 

35 a man bred to severe science and solitary meditation. 
To trifle agreeably is a secret which schools cannot 
impart; that gay negligence and vivacious levity which 



158 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

charm down resistance wherever they appear, are never 
attainable by him who, having spent his first years 
among the dnst of libraries, enters late into the gay 
world with an nnpliant attention and established habits. 

It is observed in the panegyric on Fabricius the 5 
mechanist, that, though forced by public employments 
into mingled conversation, he never lost the modesty and 
seriousness of the convent, nor drew ridicule upon him- 
self by an affected imitation of fashionable life. To 
the same praise every man devoted to learning ought 10 
to aspire. If he attempts the softer arts of pleasing, 
and endeavors to learn the graceful bow and the fa- 
miliar embrace, the insinuating accent and the general 
smile, he will lose the respect due to the character of 
learning, without arriving at the envied honor of doing 15 
any thing with elegance and facility. 

Theophrastus was discovered not to be a native of 
Athens, by so strict an adherence to the Attic dialect 
as showed that he had learned it not by custom, but 
by rule. A man not early formed to habitual elegance 20 
betrays in like manner the effects of his education, 
by an unnecessary anxiety of behavior. It is as possible 
to become pedantic by fear of pedantry, as to be trouble- 
some by ill-timed civility. There is no kind of im- 
pertinence more justly censurable, than his who is al- 25 
ways laboring to level thoughts to intellects higher than 
his own; who apologizes for every word which his own 
narrowness of converse inclines him to think unusual; 
keeps the exuberance of his faculties under visible re- 
straint; is solicitous to anticipate inquiries by needless 30 
explanations; and endeavors to shade his own abilities, 
lest weak eyes should be dazzled with their lustre. 



THE RAMBLER 159 

No. 188. Saturday, January 4, 1752 

Si te colOj, Sexte, non amabo. 

— Mart., Epig. 2. 55. 3. 

The more I honor thee, the less I love. 

None of the desires dictated by yanity is more general, 
or less blameable, than that of being distinguished for 
the arts of conversation. Other accomplishments may 
be possessed without opportunity of exerting them, or 
5 wanted without danger that the defect can often be 
remarked; but as no man can live otherwise than in 
an hermitage without hourly pleasure or vexation from 
the fondness or neglect of those about him, the faculty 
of giving pleasure is of continual use. Few are more 

10 frequently envied than those who have the power of 
forcing attention wherever they come, whose entrance is 
considered as a promise of felicity, and whose departure 
is lamented, like the recess of the sun from northern 
climates, as a privation of all that enlivens fancy, or 

15 inspirits gaiety. 

It is apparent that to excellence in this valuable art 
some peculiar qualifications are necessary; for every 
one's experience will inform him that the pleasure which 
men are able to give in conversation holds no stated 

20 proportion to their knowledge or their virtue. Many 
find their way to the tables and the parties of those 
who never consider them as of the least importance in 
any other place; we have all, at one time or other, 
been content to love those whom we could not esteem, 

25 and been persuaded to try the dangerous experiment 
of admitting him for a companion whom we knew to 
be too ignorant for a counsellor, and too treacherous 
for a friend. 

I question whether some abatement of character is 

30 not necessary to general acceptance. Few spend their 
time with much satisfaction under the eye of uncon- 
testable superiority; and therefore, among those whose 



160 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

presence is courted at assemblies of jollity there are 
seldom found men eminently distinguished for powers 
or acquisitions. The wit whose vivacity condemns slower 
tongues to silence, the scholar whose knowledge allows 
no man to fancy that he instructs him, the critic who 5 
suffers no fallacy to pass undetected, and the reasoner 
who condemns the idle to thought, and the negligent 
to attention, are generally praised and feared, reverenced 
and avoided. 

He that would please must rarely aim at such ex- 10 
cellence as depresses his hearers in their own opinion, 
or debars them from the hope of contributing recipro- 
cally to the entertainment of the company. Merriment, 
extorted by sallies of imagination, sprightliness of re- 
mark, or quickness of reply, is too often what the Latins 15 
call the Sardinian laughter, a distortion of the face 
without gladness of heart. 

For this reason, no style of conversation is more ex- 
tensively acceptable than the narrative. He who has 
stored his memory with slight anecdotes, private in- 20 
cidents, and personal peculiarities, seldom fails to find 
his audience favorable. Almost every man listens with 
eagerness to contemporary history ; for almost every man 
has some real or imaginary connection with a celebrated 
character; some desire to advance or oppose a rising 25 
name. Vanity often cooperates with curiosity. He 
that is a hearer in one place, qualifies himself to become 
a speaker in another; for though he cannot comprehend 
a series of argument, or transport the volatile spirit 
of wit without evaporation, he yet thinks himself able 30 
to treasure up the various incidents of a story, and 
pleases his hopes with the information which he shall 
give to some inferior society. 

Narratives are for the most part heard without envy, 
because they are not supposed to imply any intellectual 35 
qualities above the common rate. To be acquainted with 
facts not yet echoed by plebeian mouths, may happen to 



THE RAMBLER 161 

one man as well as to another; and to relate them when 
they are known, has in appearance so little difficulty, 
that every one concludes himself equal to the task. 
But it is not easy, and in some situations of life not 
5 possible, to accumulate such a stock of materials as may 
support the expense of continual narration; and it fre- 
quently happens, that they who attempt this method of 
ingratiating themselves, please only at the first inter- 
view; and, for want of new supplies of intelligence, 

10 wear out their stories by continual repetition. 

There would be, therefore, little hope of obtaining the 
praise of a good companion, were it not to be gained by 
more compendious methods; but such is the kindness of 
mankind to all, except those who aspire to real merit 

15 and rational dignity, that every understanding may find 
some way to excite benevolence; and whoever is not en- 
vied may learn the art of procuring love. We are will- 
ing to be pleased, but are not willing to admire; we 
favor the mirth or officiousness that solicits our regard, 

20 but oppose the worth or spirit that enforces it. 

The first place among those that please, because they 
desire only to please, is due to the merry fellow, whose 
laugh is loud, and whose voice is strong; who is ready 
to echo every jest with obstreperous approbation, and 

25 countenance every frolic with vociferations of applause. 
It is not necessary to a merry fellow to have in himself 
any fund of jocularity, or force of conception; it is 
sufficient that he always appears in the highest exalta- 
tion of gladness, for the greater part of mankind are 

30 gay or serious by infection, and follow without resist- 
ance the attraction of example. 

Next to the meriy fellow is the good-natured man, 
a being generally without benevolence, or any other 
virtue, than such as indolence and insensibility confer. 

35 The characteristic of a good-natured man is to bear a 
joke; to sit unmoved and unaffected amidst noise and 
turbulence, profaneness and obscenity; to hear every tale 



162 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

without contradiction; to endure insult without reply; 
and to follow the stream of folly, whatever course it 
shall happen to take. The good-natured man is com- 
monly the darling of the petty wits, with whom they 
exercise themselves in the rudiments of raillery ; for he 5 
never takes advantage of failings, nor disconcerts a 
puny satirist with unexpected sarcasms; but while the 
glass continues to circulate, contentedly bears the ex- 
pense of uninterrupted laughter, and retires rejoicing at 
his own importance. 10 

The modest man is a companion of a yet lower rank, 
whose only power of giving pleasure is not to in- 
terrupt it. The modest man satisfies himself with peace- 
ful silence, which all his companions are candid enough 
to consider as proceeding not from inability to speak, 15 
but willingness to hear. 

Many, without being able to attain any general char- 
acter of excellence, have some single art of entertain- 
ment which serves them as a passport through the 
world. One I have known for fifteen years the darling 20 
of a weekly club, because every night, precisely at 
eleven, he begins his favorite song, and during the vocal 
performance, by corresponding motions of his hand, 
chalks out a giant upon the wall. Another has en- 
deared himself to a long succession of acquaintances 25 
by sitting among them with his wig reversed; another 
by contriving to smut the nose of any stranger who 
was to be initiated in the club; another by purring like 
a cat, and then pretending to be frighted, and another 
by yelping like a hound, and calling to the drawers to 30 
drive out the dog. 

Such are the arts by which cheerfulness is promoted, 
and sometimes friendship established; arts, which those 
who despise them should not rigorously blame, except 
when they are practised at the expense of innocence; 35 
for it is always necessary to be loved, but not always 
necessary to be reverenced. 



THE RAMBLER 163 

No. 191. Tuesday, January 14, 1752 

Cereus in vitium fiecti, monitorious asper. 

— Hor. Art of Poetry 163. 

The youth 

Yielding like wax, th' impressive folly hears ; 

Rough to reproof, and slow to future cares. — Francis. 

to the rambler 

Dear Mr. Rambler : 

I have been four clays confined to my chamber by a 
cold, which has already kept me from three plays, nine 
sales, five shows, and six card-tables, and put me seven- 
5 teen visits behindhand; and the doctor tells my mamma, 
that if I fret and cry, it will settle in my head, and I 
shall not be fit to be seen these six weeks. But, dear 
Mr. Rambler, how can I help it? At this very time 
Melissa is dancing with the prettiest gentleman; she 

10 will breakfast w T ith him to-morrow, and then run to 
two auctions, and hear compliments, and have presents; 
then she will be dressed, and visit, and get a ticket to 
the play; then go to cards and win, and come home with 
two flambeaux before her chair. Dear Mr. Rambler, 

15 who can bear it ? 

My aunt has just brought me a bundle of your papers 
for my amusement. She says, you are a philosopher, 
and will teach me to moderate my desires, and look upon 
the world with indifference. But, dear sir, I do not 

20 wish, nor intend, to moderate my desires, nor can I 
think it proper to look upon the world with indifference, 
till the world looks with indifference on me. I have 
been forced, however, to sit this morning a whole quarter 
of an hour with your paper before my face; but just 

25 as my aunt came in, Phyllida had brought me a letter 
from Mr. Trip, which I put within the leaves; and read 
about i absence ' and i inconsolableness/ and i ardor/ and 
1 irresistible passion/ and 6 eternal constancy/ while my 



164 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

aunt imagined that I was puzzling myself with your 
philosophy, and often cried out, when she saw me look 
confused, ' If there is any word that you do not under- 
stand, child, I will explain it.' 

Dear soul ! How old people that think themselves wise 5 
may be imposed upon! But it is fit that they should 
take their turn, for I am sure, while they can keep 
poor girls close in the nursery, they tyrannize over us 
in a very shameful manner, and fill our imaginations 
with tales of terror, only to make us live in quiet sub- 10 
jection, and fancy that we can never be safe but by their 
protection. 

I have a mamma and two aunts, who have all been 
formerly celebrated for wit and beauty, and are still 
generally admired by those that value themselves upon 15 
their understanding, and love to talk of vice and yirtue, 
nature and simplicity, and beauty and propriety; but 
if there was not some hope of meeting me, scarcely a 
creature would come near them that wears a fashionable 
coat. These ladies, Mr. Rambler, have had me under 20 
their government fifteen years and a half, and have all 
that time been endeavoring to deceive me by such repre- 
sentations of life as I now find not to be true; but I 
know not whether I ought to impute them to ignorance 
or malice, as it is possible the world may be much 25 
changed since they mingled in general conversation. 

Being desirous that I should love books, they told me 
that nothing but knowledge could make me an agreeable 
companion to men of sense, or qualify me to distinguish 
the superficial glitter of vanity from the solid merit of 30 
understanding; and that a habit of reading would enable 
me to fill up the vacuities of life without the help of 
silly or dangerous amusements, and preserve me from 
the snares of idleness and the inroads of temptation. 

But their principal intention was to make me afraid 35 
of men; in which they succeeded so well for a time, that 
I durst not look in their faces, or be left alone with 



THE RAMBLER 165 

them in a parlor; for they made me fancy that no 
man ever spoke but to deceive, or looked but to allure; 
that the girl who suffered him that had once squeezed 
her hand, to approach her a second time, was on the 
5 brink of ruin; and that she who answered a billet, with- 
out consulting her relations, gave love such power over 
her, that she would certainly become either poor or 
infamous. 

From the time that my leading-strings were taken 

10 off, I scarce heard any mention of my beauty but from 
the milliner, the mantua-maker, and my own maid; 
for my mamma never said more, when she heard me 
commended, but ' The girl is very well/ and then en- 
deavored to divert my attention by some inquiry after 

15 my needle, or my book. 

It is now three months since I have been suffered 
to pay and receive visits, to dance at public assemblies, 
to have a place kept for me in the boxes, and to play 
at Lady Racket's rout ; and you may easily imagine what 

20 1 think of those who have so long cheated me with false 
expectations, disturbed me with fictitious terrors, and 
concealed from me all that I have found to make the 
happiness of woman. 

I am so far from perceiving the usefulness or necessity 

25 of books, that if I had not dropped all pretensions to 
learning, I should have lost Mr. Trip, whom I once 
frighted into another box, by retailing some of Dryden's 
remarks upon a tragedy; for Mr. Trip declares that 
he hates nothing like hard words, and, I am sure, there 

30 is not a better partner to be found; his very walk is 
a dance. I have talked once or twice among ladies 
about principles and ideas, but they put their fans 
before their faces, and told me I was too wise for them, 
who for their part never pretended to read any thing 

35 but the play-bill, and then asked me the price of my 
best head. 

Those vacancies of time which are to be filled up with 



166 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

books I have never yet obtained; for, consider, Mr. 
Rambler, I go to bed late, and therefore cannot rise 
early; as soon as I am up, I dress for the gardens; 
then walk in the park; then always go to some sale 
or show, or entertainment at the little theatre ; then 5 
must be dressed for dinner; then must pay my visits; 
then walk in the park ; then hurry to the play ; and 
from thence to the card-table. This is the general course 
of the day, when there happens nothing extraordinary; 
but sometimes I ramble into the country, and come 10 
back again to a ball; sometimes I am engaged for a 
whole day and part of the night. If, at any time, 
I can gain an hour by not being at home, I have so 
many things to do, so many orders to give to the milliner, 
so many alterations to make in my clothes, so many 15 
visitants' names to read over, so many invitations to 
accept or refuse, so many cards to write, and so many 
fashions to consider, that I am lost in confusion, forced 
at last to let in company or step into my chair, 
and leave half my affairs to the direction of my 20 
maid. 

This is the round of my day; and when shall I either 
stop my course, or so change it as to want a book? 
I suppose it cannot be imagined, that any of these 
diversions will soon be at an end. There will always 25 
be gardens, and a park, and auctions, and shows, and 
playhouses, and cards; visits will always be paid, and 
clothes always be worn; and how can I have time un- 
employed upon my hands? 

But I am most at a loss to guess for what purpose 30 
they related such tragic stories of the cruelty, perfidy, 
and artifices of men, who, if they ever were so malicious 
and destructive, have certainly now reformed their man- 
ners. I have not, since my entrance into the world, 
found one who does not profess himself devoted to 35 
my service, and ready to live or die as I shall command 
him. They are so far from intending to hurt me, that 



THE RAMBLER 167 

their only contention is, who shall be allowed most 
closely to attend, and most frequently to treat me. 
When different places of entertainment or schemes of 
pleasure are mentioned, I can see the eye sparkle and 
5 the cheeks glow of him whose proposals obtain my 
approbation; he then leads me off in triumph, adores 
my condescension, and congratulates himself that he 
has lived to the hour of felicity. Are these, Mr. Ram- 
bler, creatures to be feared? Is it likely that any injury 

10 will be done me by those who can enjoy life only while 
I favor them with my presence? 

As little reason can I yet find to suspect them of 
stratagems and fraud. When I play at cards, they 
never take advantage of my mistakes, nor exact from 

15 me a rigorous observation of the game, Even Mr. 
Shuffle, a grave gentleman, who has daughters older 
than myself, plays with me so negligently, that I am 
sometimes inclined to believe he loses his money by 
design, and yet he is so fond of play, that he says 

20 he will one day take me to his house in the country, 
that we may try by ourselves who can conquer. I have 
not yet promised him; but when the town grows a 
little empty, I shall think upon it, for I want some 
trinkets, like Letitia's, to my watch. I do not doubt 

25 my luck, but must study some means of amusing my 
relations. 

For all these distinctions I find myself indebted to 
that beauty which I was never suffered to hear praised, 
and of which, therefore, I did not before know the full 

30 value. The concealment was certainly an intentional 
fraud, for my aunts have eyes like other people, and 
I am every day told that nothing but blindness can 
escape the influence of my charms. Their whole account 
of that world which they pretend to know so well, 

35 has been only one fiction entangled with another; and 
though the modes of life oblige me to continue some 
appearances of respect, I cannot think that they, who 



168 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

have been so clearly detected in ignorance or imposture, 
have any right to the esteem, veneration, or obedience of, 

Sir, Yours, 

Bellaria. 



No. 203. Tuesday, February 25, 1752 

Cum volet ilia dies, quw nil nisi corporis hujus 
Jus habetj incerti spatium milii finiat wvi. 

—Ovid, Met. 15. 873, 4. 

Come, soon or late, death's undetermin'd day, 
This mortal being only can decay. — Welsted. 

It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consola- 5 
tions in futurity. The time present is seldom able to 
fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, 
and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollec- 
tion or anticipation. 

Every one has so often detected the fallaciousness of 10 
hope, and the inconvenience of teaching himself to ex- 
pect what a thousand accidents may preclude, that, 
when time has abated the confidence with which youth 
rushes out to take possession of the world, we endeavor, 
or wish, to find entertainment in the review of life, 15 
and to repose upon real facts, and certain experience. 
This is perhaps one reason, among many, why age de- 
lights in narratives. 

But so full is the world of calamity, that every source 
of pleasure is polluted, and every retirement of tran- 20 
quillity disturbed. When time has supplied us with 
events sufficient to employ our thoughts, it has mingled 
them with so many disasters, that we shrink from their 
remembrance, dread their intrusion upon our minds, 
and fly from them as from enemies that pursue us with 25 
torture. 

No man past the middle point of life can sit down to 
feast upon the pleasures of youth without finding the 
banquet embittered by the cup of sorrow; he may re- 



THE RAMBLER 169 

vive lucky accidents, and pleasing extravagancies; many 
days of harmless frolic, or nights of honest festivity, 
will perhaps recur; or, if he has been engaged in scenes 
of action, and acquainted with affairs of difficulty and 
5 vicissitudes of fortune, he may enjoy the nobler pleas- 
ure of looking back upon distress firmly supported, 
dangers resolutely encountered, and opposition artfully 
defeated. ^Eneas properly comforts his companions, 
when, after the horrors of a storm, they have landed on 

10 an unknown and desolate country, with the hope that 
their miseries will be at some distant time recounted 
with delight. There are few higher gratifications than 
that of reflection on surmounted evils, when they are 
not incurred nor protracted by our fault, and neither 

15 reproach us with cowardice nor guilt. 

But this felicity is almost always abated by the re- 
flection that they with whom we should be most pleased 
to share it are now in the grave. A few years make 
such havoc in human generations, that we soon see our- 

20 selves deprived of those with whom we entered the 
world, and whom the participation of pleasures or 
fatigues had endeared to our remembrance. The man 
of enterprise recounts his adventures and expedients, 
but is forced, at the close of the relation, to pay a 

25 sigh to the names of those that contributed to his suc- 
cess; he that passes his life among the gayer part of 
mankind has his remembrance stored with remarks and 
repartees of wits, whose sprightliness and merriment 
are now lost in perpetual silence; the trader, whose 

80 industry has supplied the want of inheritance, repines in 
solitary plenty at the absence of companions, with whom 
he had planned out amusements for his latter years; 
and the scholar, whose merit, after a long series of 
efforts, raises him from obscurity, looks round in vain 

3d from his exaltation for his old friends or enemies, whose 
applause or mortification would heighten his triumph. 
Among Martial's requisites to happiness is l Res non 



170 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

parta iabore, sed relicta ' — i an estate not gained by in- 
dustry, but left by inheritance.' It is necessary to the 
completion of every good, that it be timely obtained; 
for whatever comes at the close of life will come too 
late to give mnch delight ; yet all human happiness has 5 
its defects. Of what we do not gain for ourselves we 
have only a faint and imperfect fruition, because we 
cannot compare the difference between . want and pos- 
session, or at least can derive from it no conviction 
of our own abilities, nor any increase of self-esteem; 10 
what we acquire by bravery or science, by mental or 
corporeal diligence, comes at last when we cannot com- 
municate, and therefore cannot enjoy it. 

Thus every period of life is obliged to borrow its 
happiness from the time to come. In youth we have 15 
nothing past to entertain us, and in age, we derive 
little from retrospect but hopeless sorrow. Yet the future 
likewise has its limits, which the imagination dreads to 
approach, but which we see to be not far distant. The 
loss of our friends and companions impresses hourly 20 
upon us the necessity of our own departure; we know 
that the schemes of man are quickly at an end, that 
we must soon lie down in the grave with the forgotten 
multitudes of former ages, and yield our place to others, 
who, like us, shall be driven awhile by hope or fear 25 
about the surface of the earth, and then, like us, be 
lost in the shades of death. 

Beyond this termination of our material existence we 
are therefore obliged to extend our hopes; and almost 
every man indulges his imagination with something 30 
which is not to happen till he has changed his manner 
of being : some amuse themselves with entails and settle- 
ments, provide for the perpetuation of families and 
honors, or contrive to obviate the dissipation of the 
fortunes which it has been their business to accumulate ; 35 
others, more refined or exalted, congratulate their own 
hearts upon the future extent of their reputation, the 



TEE RAMBLER 171 

reverence of distant nations, and the gratitude of un- 
prejudiced posterity. 

They whose souls are so chained down to coffers and 
tenements, that they cannot conceive a state in which 
5 they shall look upon them with less solicitude, are 
seldom attentive or flexible to arguments; but the vo- 
taries of fame are capable of reflection, and therefore 
may be called to reconsider the probability of their 
expectations. 

10 Whether to be remembered in remote times be worthy 
of a wise man's wish, has not yet been satisfactorily 
decided; and, indeed, to be long remembered, can hap- 
pen to so small a number, that the bulk of mankind 
has very little interest in the question. There is never 

15 room in the world for more than a certain quantity or 
measure of renown. The necessary business of life, 
the immediate pleasures or pains of every condition, 
leave us not leisure beyond a fixed proportion for con- 
templations which do not forcibly influence our present 

20 welfare. When this vacuity is filled, no characters can 
be admitted into the circulation of fame, but by occupy- 
ing the place of some that must be thrust into oblivion. 
The eye of the mind, like that of the body, can only 
extend its view to new objects, by losing sight of those 

25 which are now before it. 

Reputation is therefore a meteor which blazes a 
while and disappears for ever; and, if we except a 
few transcendent and invincible names, which no revo- 
lutions of opinion or length of time is able to suppress; 

30 all those that engage our thoughts, or diversify our 
conversation, are every moment hasting to obscurity, 
as new favorites are adopted by fashion. 

It is not therefore from this world, that any ray of 
comfort can proceed, to cheer the gloom of the last hour. 

35 But futurity has still its prospects; there is yet happi- 
ness in reserve, which, if we transfer our attention to 
it, will support us in the pains of disease and the 



172 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

languor of decay. This happiness we may expect with 
confidence, because it is out of the power of chance, 
and may be attained by all that sincerely desire and 
earnestly pursue it. On this therefore every mind ought 
finally to rest. Hope is the chief blessing of man, and 5 
that hope only is rational of which we are certain that 
it cannot deceive us. 

No. 204. Saturday, February 29, 1752 

Nemo tarn divos Jiabuit faventes, 
Crastinum ut possit sibi polliceri. — Seneca. 

Of heaven's protection who can be 

So confident to utter this ? — 

To-morrow I will spend in bliss. — F. Lewis. 

Seged, lord of Ethiopia, to the inhabitants of the 
world: To the sons of presumption, humility and fear; 
and to the daughters of sorrow, content and acquiescence. 10 

Thus, in the twenty-seventh year of his reign, spoke 
Seged, the monarch of forty nations, the distributor of 
the waters of the Nile : ' At length, Seged, thy toils are 
at an end; thou hast reconciled disaffection, thou hast 
suppressed rebellion, thou hast pacified the jealousies of 15 
thy courtiers, thou hast chased war from thy confines, 
and erected fortresses in the lands of thine enemies. 
All who have offended thee tremble in thy presence, and 
wherever thy voice is heard, it is obeyed. Thy throne 
is surrounded by armies numerous as the locusts of the 20 
summer, and resistless as the blasts of pestilence. Thy 
magazines are stored with ammunition, thy treasures 
overflow with the tribute of conquered kingdoms. Plenty 
waves upon thy fields, and opulence glitters in thy 
cities. Thy nod is as the earthquake that shakes the 25 
mountains, and thy smile as the dawn of the vernal day. 
In thy hand is the strength of thousands, and thy 
health is the health of millions. Thy palace is glad- 
dened by the song of praise, and thy path perfumed 



THE RAMBLER 173 

by the breath of benediction. Thy subjects gaze upon 
thy greatness, and think of danger or misery no more. 
Why, Seged, wilt not thou partake the blessings thou 
bestowest? Why shouldst thou only forbear to rejoice 
5 in this general felicity f Why should thy face be 
clouded with anxiety, when the meanest of those who 
call thee sovereign gives the day to festivity, and the 
night to peace? At length, Seged, reflect and be wise. 
What is the gift of conquest but safety? Why are 

10 riches collected but to purchase happiness ? ' 

Seged then ordered the house of pleasure, built in an 
island of the lake of Dambea, to be prepared for his 
reception. ' I will retire/ says he, ' for ten days from 
tumult and care, from counsels and decrees. Long quiet 

15 is not the lot of the governors of nations, but a cessa- 
tion of ten days cannot be denied me. This short in- 
terval of happiness may surely be secured from the 
interruption of fear or perplexity, sorrow or disappoint- 
ment. I will exclude all trouble from my abode, and 

20 remove from my thoughts whatever may confuse the 
harmony of the concert, or abate the sweetness of the 
banquet. I will fill the whole capacity of my soul 
with enjoyment, and try what it is to live without a 
wish unsatisfied.' 

25 In a few days the orders were performed, and Seged 
hasted to the palace of Dambea, which stood in an 
island cultivated only for pleasure, planted with every 
flower that spreads its colors to the sun, and every 
shrub that sheds fragrance in the air. In one part 

30 of this extensive garden, were open walks for excursions 
in the morning; in another, thick groves, and silent 
arbors, and bubbling fountains for repose at noon. All 
that could solace the sense, or flatter the fancy, all 
that industry could extort from nature, or wealth furnish 

35 to art, all that conquest could seize, or beneficence at- 
tract, was collected together, and every perception of 
delight was excited and gratified, 



174 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

Into this delicious region Seged summoned all the 
persons of his court who seemed eminently qualified 
to receive or communicate pleasure. His call was readily 
obeyed; the young, the fair, the vivacious, and the 
witty, were all in haste to be sated with felicity. They 5 
sailed jocund over the lake, which seemed to smoothe 
its surface before them: their passage was cheered with 
music, and their hearts dilated with expectation. 

Seged, landing here with his band of pleasure, deter- 
mined from that hour to break off all acquaintance 10 
with discontent, to give his heart for ten days to ease 
and jollity, and then fall back to the common state 
of man, and suffer his life to be diversified, as before, 
with joy and sorrow. 

He immediately entered his chamber to consider 15 
where he should begin his circle of happiness. He had 
all the artists of delight before him, but knew not whom 
to call, since he could not enjoy one but by delaying 
the performance of another. He chose and rejected, he 
resolved and changed his resolution, till his faculties 20 
were harassed, and his thoughts confused; then returned 
to the apartment where his presence was expected with 
languid eyes and clouded countenance, and spread the 
infection of uneasiness over the whole assembly. Ha 
observed their depression, and was offended, for he 25 
found his vexation increased by those whom he expected 
to dissipate and relieve it. He retired again to his 
private chamber, and sought for consolation in his own 
mind; one thought flowed in upon another; a long suc- 
cession of images seized his attention ; the moments crept 30 
imperceptibly away through the gloom of pensiveness, 
till, having recovered his tranquillity, he lifted up his 
head, and saw the lake brightened by the setting sun. 
1 Such/ said Seged sighing, i is the longest day of hu- 
man existence : before we have learned to use it, we 35 
find it at an end/ 

The regret which he felt for the loss of so great a 



THE RAMBLER 175 

part of his first day took from him all disposition to 
enjoy the evening; and, after having endeavored, for 
the sake of his attendants, to force an air of gaiety, 
and excite that mirth which he could not share, he 
5 resolved to refer his hopes to the next morning, and 
lay down to partake with the slaves of labor and poverty 
the blessing of sleep. 

He rose early the second morning, and resolved now 
to be happy. He therefore fixed upon the gate of the 

10 palace an edict, importing that whoever, during nine 
days, should appear in the presence of the king with 
a dejected countenance, or utter any expression of dis- 
content or sorrow, should be driven for ever from the 
palace of Dambea. 

15 This edict was immediately made known in every 
chamber of the court and bower of the gardens. Mirth 
was frighted away, and they who were before dancing 
in the lawns, or singing in the shades, were at once 
engaged in the care of regulating their looks, that Seged 

20 might find his will punctually obeyed, and see none 
among them liable to banishment. 

Seged now met every face settled in a smile; but a 
smile that betrayed solicitude, timidity, and constraint. 
He accosted his favorites with familiarity and softness ; 

25 but they durst not speak without premeditation, lest 
they should be convicted of discontent or sorrow. He 
proposed diversions, to which no objection was made, 
because objection would have implied uneasiness; but 
they were regarded with indifference by the courtiers, 

30 who had no other desire than to signalize themselves 
by clamorous exultation. He offered various topics of 
conversation, but obtained only forced jests and labori- 
ous laughter; and after many attempts to animate his 
train to confidence and alacrity, was obliged to confess 

35 to himself the impotence of command, and resign another 
day to grief and disappointment. 

He at last relieved his companions from their terrors, 



176 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

and shut himself up in his chamber to ascertain, by 
different measures, the felicity of the succeeding days. 
At length he threw himself on the bed, and closed his 
eyes, but imagined, in his sleep, that his palace and 
gardens were overwhelmed by an inundation, and waked 5 
with all the terrors of a man struggling in the water. 
He composed himself again to rest, but was affrighted- 
by an imaginary irruption into his kingdom, and striv- 
ing, as is usual in dreams, without ability to move, 
fancied himself betrayed to his enemies, and again 10 
started up with horror and indignation. 

It was now day, and fear was so strongly impressed 
on his mind that he could sleep no more. He rose, 
but his thoughts were filled with the deluge and in- 
vasion, nor was he able to disengage his attention, or 15 
mingle with vacancy and ease in any amusement. At 
length his perturbation gave way to reason, and he 
resolved no longer to be harassed by visionary miseries; 
but before this resolution could be completed, half the 
day had elapsed : he felt a new conviction of the un- 20 
certainty of human schemes, and could not forbear to 
bewail the weakness of that being whose quiet was to 
be interrupted by vapors of the fancy. Having been 
first disturbed by a dream, he afterwards grieved that 
a dream could disturb him. He at last discovered that 25 
his terrors and grief were equally vain, and that to lose 
the present in lamenting the past was voluntarily to 
protract a melancholy vision. The third day was now 
declining, and Seged again resolved to be happy on the 
morrow. , 30 



THE RAMBLER 177 



No. 205. Tuesday, March 3, 1752 

Tolat ambiguis 

Mobil is aiis hora, nee ulli 
Prcestat velox fort una fldem. 

— Seneca, Hippol. 1140-2. 

On fickle wings the minutes haste, 

And fortune's favors never last. — P. Lewis. 



Ok the fourth morning Seged rose early, refreshed 
with sleep, vigorous with health, and eager with ex- 
pectation. He entered the garden, attended by the 
princes and ladies of his court, and seeing nothing 
5 about him but airy cheerfulness, began to say to his 
heart, ' This day shall be a day of pleasure/ The sun 
played upon the water, the birds warbled in the groves, 
and the gales quivered among the branches. He roved 
from walk to walk as chance directed him, and sonie- 

10 times listened to the songs, sometimes mingled with the 
dancers, sometimes let loose his imagination in nights 
of merriment; and sometimes uttered grave reflections, 
and sententious maxims, and feasted on the admiration 
with which they were received. 

15 Thus the day rolled on without any accident of 
vexation or intrusion of melancholy thoughts. All that 
beheld him caught gladness from his looks, and the 
sight of happiness conferred by himself filled his heart 
with satisfaction; but having passed three hours in this 

20 harmless luxury, he was alarmed on a sudden by an 
universal scream among the women, and turning back, 
saw the whole assembly flying in confusion. A young 
crocodile had risen out of the lake, and was ranging 
the garden in wantonness or hunger. Seged beheld him 

25 with indignation, as a disturber of his felicity, and 
chased him back into the lake, but could not persuade 
his retinue to stay, or free their hearts from the terror 
which had seized upon them. The princesses enclosed 
themselves in the palace, and could yet scarcely believe 
1 30 themselves in safety. Every attention was fixed upon 



178 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

the late danger and escape, and no mind was any longer 
at leisure for gay sallies or careless prattle. 

Seged had now no other employment than to contem- 
plate the innumerable casualties which lie in ambush 
on every side to intercept the happiness of man, and 5 
break in upon the hour of delight and tranquillity. He 
had, however, the consolation of thinking that he had 
not been now disappointed by his own fault, and that 
the accident which had blasted, the hopes of the day 
might easily be prevented by future caution. 10 

That he might provide for the pleasure of the next 
morning, he resolved to repeal his penal edict, since 
he had already found that discontent and melancholy 
were not to be frighted away by the threats of author- 
ity, and that Pleasure would only reside where she 15 
was exempted from control. He therefore invited, all 
the companions of his retreat to unbounded pleasantry, 
by proposing prizes for those who should, on the follow- 
ing day, distinguish themselves by any festive perform- 
ances ; the tables of the antechamber were covered with 20 
gold and pearls, and robes and garlands decreed the 
rewards of those who could refine elegance or. heighten 
pleasure. 

At this display of riches every eye immediately 
sparkled, and every tongue was busied in celebrating 25 
the bounty and magnificence of the emperor. But when 
Seged entered, in hopes of uncommon entertainment 
from universal emulation, he found that any passion 
too strongly agitated puts an end to that tranquillity 
which is necessary to mirth, and that the mind that 30 
is to be moved by the gentle ventilations of gaiety must 
be first smoothed by a total calm. Whatever we ardently 
wish to gain, we must in the same degree be afraid to 
lose, and fear and pleasure cannot dwell together. 

All was now care and solicitude. Nothing was done 35 
or spoken, but with so visible an endeavor at perfection 
as always failed to delight, though it sometimes forced 



THE RAMBLER 179 

admiration ; and Seged could not but observe with sor- 
row that his prizes had more influence than himself. 
As the evening approached, the contest grew more earn- 
est, and those who were forced to allow themselves 
5 excelled began to discover the malignity of defeat, first 
by angry glaneei, and at last by contemptuous murmurs. 
Seged likewise shared the anxiety of the day, for con- 
sidering himself as obliged to distribute with exact 
justice the prizes which had been so zealously sought, 

10 he durst never remit his attention, but passed his time 

upon the rack of doubt in balancing different kinds 

of merit, and adjusting the claims of all the competitors. 

At last, knowing that no exactness could satisfy those 

whose hopes he should disappoint, and thinking that 

15 on a day set apart for happiness, it would be cruel to 
oppress any heart with sorrow, he declared that all 
had pleased him alike, and dismissed all with presents 
of equal value. 

Seged soon saw that his caution had not been able 

20 to avoid offense. They who had believed themselves 
secure of the highest prizes, were not pleased to be 
levelled with the crowd; and though, by the liberality 
of the king, they received more than his promise had 
entitled them to expect, they departed unsatisfied, be- 

25 cause they were honored with no distinction, and wanted 
an opportunity to triumph in the mortification of their 
opponents. ' Behold here/ said Seged, ' the condition 
of him who places his happiness in the happiness of 
others/ He then retired to meditate, and, while the 

30 courtiers were repining at his distributions, saw the 
fifth sun go down in discontent. 

The next dawn renewed his resolution to be happy. 
But having learned how little he could effect by settled 
schemes or preparatory measures, he thought it best to 

35 give up one day entirely to chance, and left every one 
to please and be pleased his own way. 

This relaxation of regularity diffused a general com- 



180 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

plaeence through the whole court, and the emperor im- 
agined that he had at last found the secret of obtaining 
an interval of felicity. But as he was roving in this 
careless assembly with equal carelessness, he overheard 
one of his courtiers in a close arbor murmuring alone : 5 
i What merit has Seged above us, that we should thus 
fear and obey him, a man, whom, whatever he may have - 
formerly performed, his luxury now shows to have 
the same weakness with ourselves.' This charge affected 
him the more, as it was uttered by one whom he had 10 
always observed among the most abject of his flatterers. 
At first his indignation prompted him to severity; but 
reflecting that what was spoken without intention to 
be heard, was to be considered as only thought, and 
was perhaps but the sudden burst of casual and tempo- 15 
rary vexation, he invented some decent pretense to send 
him away, that his retreat might not be tainted with 
the breath of envy, and, after the struggle of delibera- 
tion was past, and all desire of revenge utterly sup- 
pressed, passed the evening not only with tranquillity, 20 
but triumph, though none but himself was conscious of 
the victory. 

The remembrance of his clemency cheered the begin- 
ning of the seventh day, and nothing happened to dis- 
turb the pleasure of Seged, till, looking on the tree 25 
that shaded him, he recollected that under a tree of 
the same kind he had passed the night after his defeat 
in the kingdom of Goiama. The reflection on his loss, 
his dishonor, and the miseries which his subjects suf- 
fered from the invader, filled him with sadness. At last 30 
he shook off the weight of sorrow, and began to solace 
himself with his usual pleasures, when his tranquillity 
was again disturbed by jealousies which the late contest 
for the prizes had produced, and which, having in vain 
tried to pacify them by persuasion, he was forced to 35 
silence by command. 

On the eighth morning Seged was awakened early 



THE RAMBLER 



181 



by an unusual hurry in the apartments, and inquiring 
the cause, was told that the princess Balkis was seized 
with sickness. He rose, and calling the physicians, found 
that they had little hope of her recovery. Here was an 
5 end of jollity; all his thoughts were now upon his 
daughter, whose eyes he closed on the tenth day. 

Such were the days which Seged of Ethiopia had 
appropriated to a short respiration from the fatigues 
of war and the cares of government. This narrative he 
10 has bequeathed to future generations, that no man here- 
after may presume to say, ' This day shall be a day of 
happiness/ 



Ube a&venturer 1 

No. 102. Saturday, October 27, 1753 

Quid tarn dextro pede coricipis, ut te 

Conatus non pwniteat, votique peracti? — Juv. 10. 5, 6. 

What in the conduct of our life appears 
. So well design'd, so luckily begun, 

But when we have our wish, we wish undone? — Dryden. 

to the adventurer 
Sir: 

I have been for many years a trader in London. My 
beginning was narrow, and my stock small; I was, 
therefore, a long time brow-beaten and despised by 
those who, having more money, thought they had more 5 
merit than myself. I did not, however, suffer my re- 
sentment to instigate me to any mean arts of supplanta- 
tion, nor my eagerness of riches to betray me to any 
indirect methods of gain ; I pursued my business with 
incessant assiduity, supported by the hope of being one 10 
day richer than those who contemned me; and had, 
upon every annual review of my books, the satisfaction 
of finding my fortune increased beyond my expectation. 

In a few years my industry and probity were fully 
recompensed, my wealth was really great, and my repu- 15 
tation for wealth still greater. I had large warehouses 
crowded with goods, and considerable sums in the pub- 
lic funds; I was caressed upon the Exchange by the 

1 Eight months after the end of The Rambler, Johnson's 
friend and admirer, Hawkesworth, began The Adventurer. It 
was published semi-weekly for more than a year, and Johnson 
wrote more than twenty essays for it, besides giving his very 
useful advice and suggestions. 

182 



THE ADVENTURER 183 

most eminent merchants; became the oracle of the com- 
mon council; was solicited to engage in all commercial 
undertakings; was flattered with the hopes of becoming 
in a short time one of the directors of a wealthy com- 
5pany; and, to complete my mercantile honors, enjoyed 
the expensive happiness of fining for sheriff. 

Riches, you know, easily produce riches; when I had 
arrived to this degree of wealth, I had no longer any 
obstruction or opposition to fear; new acquisitions were 

10 hourly brought within my reach, and I continued for 
some years longer to heap thousands upon thousands. 

At last I resolved to complete the circle of a citizen's 
prosperity by the purchase of an estate in the country, 
and to close my life in retirement. From the hour that 

15 this design entered my imagination, I found the fatigues 
of my employment every day more oppressive, and per- 
suaded myself that I was no longer equal to perpetual 
attention, and that my health would soon be destroyed 
by the torment and distraction of extensive business. 

20 1 could imagine to myself no happiness but in vacant 
jollity and uninterrupted leisure; nor entertain my 
friends with any other topic than the vexation and un- 
certainty of trade, and the happiness of rural privacy. 
But notwithstanding these declarations, I could not 

25 at once reconcile myself to the thoughts of ceasing to 
get money; and though I was every day inquiring for 
a purchase, I found some reason for rejecting all that 
were offered me; and, indeed, had accumulated so many 
beauties and conveniences in my idea of the spot where 

30 I was finally to be happy, that, perhaps, the world might 

have been travelled over without discovery of a place 

which would not have been defective in some particular. 

Thus I went on, still talking of retirement, and still 

refusing to retire ; my friends began to laugh at my 

35 delays, and I grew ashamed to trifle longer with my own 
inclinations; an estate was at length purchased, I trans- 
ferred my stock to a prudent young man who had 



184 SELECTIONS FEOM JOHNSON 

married my daughter, went down into the country, and 
commenced lord of a spacious manor. 

Here for some time I found happiness equal to my 
expectation. I reformed the old house according to 
the advice of the best architects, I threw down the walls 5 
of the garden, and enclosed it with palisades, planted 
long avenues of trees, filled a greenhouse with exotic 
plants, dug a new canal, and threw the earth into the 
old moat. 

The fame of these expensive improvements brought 10 
in all the country to see the show. I entertained my 
visitors with great liberality, led them round my gar- 
dens, showed them my apartments, laid before them 
plans for new decorations, and was gratified by the won- 
der of some and the envy of others. 15 

I was envied; but how little can one man judge of 
the condition of another! The time was now coming in 
which affluence and splendor could no longer make me 
pleased with myself. I had built till the imagination 
of the architect was exhausted ; I had added one con- 20 
venience to another till I knew not what more to wish 
or to design; I had laid out my gardens, planted my 
park, and completed my waterworks; and what now 
remained to be done? What, but to look up to turrets, 
of which, when they were once raised, I had no further 25 
use, to range over apartments where time was tarnish- 
ing the furniture, to stand by the cascade of which 
I scarcely now perceived the sound, and to watch the 
growth of woods that must give their shade to a distant 
generation? 30 

In this gloomy inactivity is every day begun and 
ended; the happiness that I have been so long pro- 
curing is now at an end, because it has been procured; 
I wander from room to room, till I am weary of my- 
self ; I ride out to a neighboring hill in the centre of 35 
my estate, from whence all my lands lie in prospect 
round me; I see nothing that I have not seen before, 



THE ADVENTURES 185 

and return home disappointed, though I knew that I 
had nothing to expect. 

In my happy days of business I had been accustomed 
to rise early in the morning; and remember the time 
5 when I grieved that the night came so soon upon me, 
and obliged me for a few hours to shut out affluence 
and prosperity. I now seldom see the rising sun, but 
to * tell him/ with the fallen angel, i how I hate his 
beams.' I awake from sleep as to languor or imprison- 

lOment, and have no employment for the first hour but 
to consider by what art I shall rid myself of the second. 
I protract the breakfast as long as I can, because when 
it is ended I have no call for my ' attention, till I can 
with some degree of decency grow impatient for my 

15 dinner. If I could dine all my life, I should be happy ; 
I eat not because I am hungry, but because I am idle: 
but, alas! the time quickly comes when I can eat no 
longer; and so ill does my constitution second my in- 
clination, that I cannot bear strong liquors; seven hours 

20 must then be endured before I shall sup ; but supper 
comes at last, the more welcome as it is in a short time 
succeeded by sleep. 

Such, Mr. Adventurer, is the happiness, the hope of 
which seduced me from the duties and pleasures of a 

25 mercantile life. I shall be told by those who read my 
narrative, that there are many means of innocent amuse- 
ment, and many schemes of useful employment which 
I do not appear ever to have known; and that nature 
and art have provided pleasures by which, without the 

30 drudgery of settled business, the active may be engaged, 
the solitary soothed, and the social entertained. 

These arts, Sir, I have tried. When first I took pos- 
session of my estate, in conformity to the taste of my 
neighbors, I bought guns and nets, filled my kennel with 

35 dogs, and my stable with horses : but a little experience 
showed me that these instruments of rural felicity would 
afford me few gratifications. I never shot but to miss 



186 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

the mark, and, to confess the truth, was afraid of the 
fire of my own gun. I could discover no music in 
the cry of the dogs, nor could divest myself of pity 
for the animal whose peaceful and inoffensive life was 
sacrificed to our sport. I was not, indeed, always at 5 
leisure to reflect upon her danger ; for my horse, who 
had been bred to the chase, did not always regard 
my choice either of speed or way, but leaped hedges 
and ditches at his own discretion, and hurried me along 
with the dogs, to the great diversion of my brother 10 
sportsmen. His eagerness of pursuit once incited him 
to swim a river; and I had leisure to resolve in the 
water that I would never hazard my life again for 
the destruction of a hare. 

I then ordered books to be procured, and by the 15 
direction of the vicar had in a few weeks a closet 
elegantly furnished. You will, perhaps, be surprised 
when I shall tell you that when once I had ranged 
them according to their sizes, and piled them up in 
regular gradations, I had received all the pleasure which 20 
they could give me. I am not able to excite in myself 
any curiosity after events which have been long passed, 
and in which I can therefore have no interest; I am 
utterly unconcerned to know whether Tully or Demos- 
thenes excelled . in oratory, whether Hannibal lost Italy 25 
by his own negligence or the corruption of his country- 
men. I have no skill in controversial learning, nor 
can conceive why so many volumes should have been 
written upon questions which I have lived so long 
and so happily without understanding. I once resolved 30 
to go through the volumes relating to the office of justice 
of the peace, but found them so crabbed and intricate, 
that in less than a month I desisted in despair, and 
resolved to supply my deficiencies by paying a com- 
petent salary to a skillful clerk. 35 

I am naturally inclined to hospitality, and for some 
time kept up a constant intercourse of visits with the 






THE ADVENTURER 187 

neighboring gentlemen; but though they are easily 
brought about me by better wine than they can find 
at any other house, I am not much relieved by their 
conversation; they have no skill in commerce or the 
5 stocks, and I have no knowledge of the history of 
families or the factions of the country; so that when 
the first civilities are over, they usually talk to one 
another, and I am left alone in the midst of the com- 
pany. Though I cannot drink myself, I am obliged to 

10 encourage the circulation of the glass ; their mirth grows 
more turbulent and obstreperous; and before their mer- 
riment is at an end, I am sick with disgust, and per- 
haps reproached with my sobriety, or by some sly in- 
sinuations insulted as a cit. 

15 Such, Mr. Adventurer, is the life to which I am con- 
demned by a foolish endeavor to be happy by imitation; 
such is the happiness to which I pleased myself with 
approaching, and which I considered as the chief end 
of my cares and labors. I toiled year after year with 

20 cheerfulness, in expectation of the happy hour in which 
I might be idle. The privilege of idleness is attained, 
but has not brought with it the blessing of tranquillity. 

I am, yours, &c. 

Mercator. 



PREFATORY NOTE ON THE IDLER 

The Idler was the last of Johnson's periodical writings. 
It appeared weekly in the Universal Chronicle, published 
by the famous Newbery. Beginning in April, 1758, John- 
son wrote the one hundred and three essays in the next 
two years. In the midst of this labor he lost his mother, 
' whose death/ he wrote, ' is one of the few calamities on 
which I think with terror.' Immediately after this he 
wrote Basselas during the evenings of one week, and used 
a part of the hundred pounds thus earned to pay his 
mother's debts. The Idler was written easily and rapidly. 
' Mr. Langton remembers Johnson, when on a visit to 
Oxford, asking him one evening how long it was till the 
post went out; and on being told about half an hour, 
instantly sat down and finished an Idler, which it was 
necessary should be in London the next day. Mr. Langton 
having signified a wish to read it, " Sir (said he), you 
shall not do more than I have done myself." He then 
folded it up and sent it off' (Life 1. 331). 



188 



Zbc IFDlet 

No. 23. Saturday, September 23, 1758 

Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of 

friendship. It is painful to consider that this sublime 

enjoyment may be impaired or destroyed by innumerable 

causes, and that there is no human possession of which 

5 the duration is less certain. 

Many have talked in very exalted language, of the 
perpetuity of friendship, of invincible constancy, and 
unalienable kindness; and some examples have been seen 
of men who have continued faithful to their earliest 
10 choice, and whose affection has predominated over 
changes of fortune, and contrariety of opinion. 

But these instances are memorable, because they are 
rare. The friendship which is to be practised or ex- 
pected by common mortals, must take its rise from 
15 mutual pleasure, and must end when the power ceases 
of delighting each other. 

Many accidents therefore may happen by which the 
ardor of kindness will be abated, without criminal base- 
ness or contemptible inconstancy on either part. To 
20 give pleasure is not always in our power; and little 
does he know himself who believes that he can be al- 
ways able to receive it. 

Those who would gladly pass their days together 

may be separated by the different course of their affairs ; 

25 and friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, 

though it may be increased by short intermissions. What 

we have missed long enough to want it, we value more 

189 



190 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

when it is regained ; but that which has been lost till it is 
forgotten, will be found at last with little gladness, 
and with still less if a substitute has supplied the place. 
A man deprived of the companion to whom he used 
to open his bosom, and with whom he shared the hours 5 
of leisure and merriment, feels the day at first hanging 
heavy on him; his difficulties oppress, and his doubts 
distract him; he sees time come and go without his 
wonted gratification, and all is sadness within, and soli- 
tude about him. But this uneasiness never lasts long; 10 
necessity produces expedients, new amusements are dis- 
covered, and new conversation is admitted. 

No expectation is more frequently disappointed, than 
that which naturally arises in the mind from the pros- 
pect of meeting an old friend after long separation. 15 
We expect the attraction to be revived, and the coalition 
to be renewed; no man considers how much alteration 
time has made in himself, and very few inquire what 
effect it has had upon others. The first hour convinces 
them that the pleasure which they have formerly en- 20 
joyed, is for ever at an end; different scenes have made 
different impressions; the opinions of both are changed; 
and that similitude of manners and sentiment is lost 
which confirmed them both in the approbation of them- 
selves. 25 

Friendship is often destroyed by opposition of inter- 
est, not only by the ponderous and visible interest which 
the desire of wealth and greatness forms and maintains, 
but by a thousand secret and slight competitions, scarcely 
known to the mind upon which they operate. There is 30 
scarcely any man without some favorite trifle which 
he values above greater attainments, some desire of 
petty praise which he cannot patiently suffer to be 
frustrated. This minute ambition is sometimes crossed 
before it is known, and sometimes defeated by wanton 35 
petulance; but such attacks are seldom made without 
the loss of friendship; for whoever has once found the 



THE IDLER 191 

vulnerable part will always be feared, and the resent- 
ment will burn on in secret, of which shame hinders 
the discovery. 

This, however, is a slow malignity, which a wise man 
5 will obviate as inconsistent with quiet, and a good man 
will repress as contrary to virtue; but human happi- 
ness is sometimes violated by some more sudden 
strokes. 

A dispute begun in jest upon a subject which a 

10 moment before was on both parts regarded with care- 
less indifference, is continued by the desire of conquest, 
till vanity kindles into rage, and opposition rankles into 
enmity. Against this hasty mischief, I know not what 
security can be obtained; men will be sometimes sur- 

15 prised into quarrels ; and though they might both hasten 
to reconciliation, as soon as their tumult had subsided, 
yet two minds will seldom be found together, which can 
at once subdue their discontent, or immediately enjoy 
the sweets of peace without remembering the wounds 

20 of the conflict. 

Friendship has other enemies. Suspicion is always 
hardening the cautious, and disgust repelling the deli- 
cate. Very slender differences will sometimes part those 
whom long reciprocation of civility or beneficence has 

25 united. Lonelove and Ranger retired into the country 
to enjoy the company of each other, and returned in six 
weeks, cold and petulant; Ranger's pleasure was to 
walk in the fields, and Lonelove's to sit in a bower; 
each had complied with the other in his turn, and each 

30 was angry that compliance had been exacted. 

The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, 
or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for 
complaint, and too numerous for removal, Those who 
are angry may be reconciled; those who have been in- 

35 jured may receive a recompense: but when the desire 
of pleasing and willingness to be pleased is silently- 
diminished, the renovation of friendship is hopeless; 



192 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

as, when the vital powers sink into languor, there is no 
longer any use of the physician. 

No. 41. Saturday, January 27, 1759 

The following letter relates to an affliction perhaps 
not necessary to be imparted to the public; but I could 
not persuade myself to suppress it, because I know 5 
the sentiments to be sincere, and I feel no disposition 
to provide for this day any other entertainment. 

At tu quisquis eris, miseri qui cruda poetce 

Credideris fletu funera digna tuo, 
Hwc postrema tibi sit flendi causa, fluatque 10 

Lenis inoffenso vitaque morsque gradu. 

Mr. Idler: 

Notwithstanding the warnings of philosophers, and 
the daily examples of losses and misfortunes which life 
forces upon our observation, such is the absorption of 15 
our thoughts in the business of the present day, such 
the resignation of our reason to empty hopes of future 
felicity, or such our unwillingness to foresee what we 
dread, that every calamity comes suddenly upon us, 
and not only presses us as a burden, but crushes as a 20 
blow. 

There are evils which happen out of the common 
course of nature, against which it is no reproach not 
to be provided. A flash of lightning intercepts the 
traveller in his way. The concussion of an earthquake 25 
heaps the ruins of cities upon their inhabitants. But 
other miseries time brings, though silently yet visibly, 
forward by its even lapse, which yet approach us un- 
seen because we turn our eyes away, and seize us un- 
resisted, because we could not arm ourselves against 30 
them but by setting them before us. 

That it is vain to shrink from what cannot be avoided, 
and to hide that from ourselves which must some time 
be found, is a truth which we all know, but which 



THE IDLER 193 

all neglect, and perhaps none more than the speculative 
reason er, whose thoughts are always from home, whose 
eye 'wanders over life, whose fancy dances after meteors 
of happiness kindled by himself, and who examines 
5 every thing rather than his own state. 

Nothing is more evident than that the decays of age 
must terminate in death; yet there is no man, says Tully, 
who does not believe that he may yet live another year; 
and there is none w T ho does not, upon the same prin- 

10 ciple, hope another year for his parent or his friend ; 
but the fallacy will be in time detected: the last year, 
the last day, must come. It has come, and is past. 
The life which made my own life pleasant is at an 
end, and the gates of death are shut upon my pros- 

15 pects. 

The loss of a friend upon whom the heart was fixed, 
to whom every wish and endeavor tended, is a state of 
dreary desolation, in which the mind looks abroad im- 
patient of itself, and finds nothing but emptiness and 

20 horror. The blameless life, the artless tenderness, the 
pious simplicity, the modest resignation, the patient 
sickness, and the quiet death, are remembered only to 
add value to the loss, to aggravate regret for what 
cannot be amended, to deepen sorrow for what cannot 

25 be recalled. 

These are the calamities by which Providence gradu- 
ally disengages us from the love of life" "Other evils 
fortitude may repel, or hope may mitigate; but irrepara- 
ble privation leaves nothing to exercise resolution or 

30 flatter expectation. The dead cannot return, and noth- 
ing is left us here but languishment and grief. 

Yet such is the course of nature, that wmoever lives 
long must outlive those whom he loves and honors. 
Such is the condition of our present existence, that life 
;5 must one time lose its associations, and every inhabitant 
of the earth must walk downward to the grave alone 
and unregarded, without any partner of his joy or 



194 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

grief, without any interested witness of his misfortunes 
or success. 

Misfortune, indeed, he may yet feel; for where is 
the bottom of the misery of man? But what is success 
to him that has none to enjoy it? Happiness is not 5 
found in self -contemplation ; it is perceived only when 
it is reflected from another. 

We know little of the state of departed souls, be- 
cause such knowledge is not necessary to a good life. 
Reason deserts us at the brink of the grave and can 10 
give no farther intelligence. Revelation is not wholly 
silent. ' There is joy in the angels of Heaven over one 
sinner that repent eth ' ; and surely this joy is not in- 
communicable to souls disentangled from the body, and 
made like angels. 15 

Let hope therefore dictate what revelation does not 
confute, that the union of souls may still remain; and 
that we who are struggling with sin, sorrow, and in- 
firmities, may have our part in the attention and kind- 
ness of those who have finished their course, and are 20 
now receiving their reward. 

These are the great occasions which force the mind 
to take refuge in religion : when we have no help in 
ourselves, what can remain but that we look up to a 
higher and a greater Power ? And to what hope may we 25 
not raise our eyes and hearts, when we consider that 
the greatest Power is the best? 

Surely there is no man who, thus afflicted, does not 
seek succor in the Gospel, which has brought ' life and 
immortality to light.' The precepts of Epicurus, who 30 
teaches us to endure what the laws of the universe 
make necessary, may silence, but not content us. The 
dictates of Zeno, who commands us to look with in- 
difference on external things, may dispose us to conceal 
our sorrow, but cannot assuage it. Real alleviation of 35 
the loss of friends, and rational tranquillity in the . 
prospect of our own dissolution, can be received only 



THE IDLEE 195 

from the promises of Him in whose hands are life 
and death, and from the assurance of another and a 
better state, in which all tears will be wiped from the 
eyes, and the whole soul shall be filled with joy. Philos- 
5 ophy may infuse stubbornness, but Religion only can 
give patience. I am, &c. 

No. 45. Saturday, February 24, 1759 

There is hi many minds a kind of vanity exerted to 

. the disadvantage of themselves; a desire to be praised 

for superior acuteness discovered only in the degrada- 

lOtion of their species, or censure of their country. 

Defamation is sufficiently copious. The general lam- 
pooner of mankind may find long exercise for his zeal 
or wit, in the defects of nature, the vexations of life, the 
follies of opinion, and the corruptions of practice. But 

15 fiction is easier than discernment ; and most of these 
writers spare themselves the labor of inquiry, and ex- 
haust their virulence upon imaginary crimes, which, 
as they never existed, can never be amended. 

That the painters find no encouragement among the 

20 English for many other works than portraits, has been 
imputed to national selfishness. 'Tis vain, says the 
satirist, to set before any Englishman the scenes of 
landscape, or the heroes of history; nature and an- 
tiquity are nothing in his eye; he has no value but for 

25 himself, nor desires any copy but of his own form. 

YHioever is delighted with his own picture must derive 

his pleasure from the pleasure of another. Every man 

is always present to himself, and has, therefore, little 

need of his own resemblance, nor can desire it, but for 

80 the sake of those whom he loves, and by whom he hopes 
to be remembered. This use of the art is a natural 
and reasonable consequence of affection; and though, like 
other human actions, it is often complicated with pride, 
yet even such pride is more laudable than that by 



196 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

which palaces are covered with pictures, that, however 
excellent, neither imply the owner's y_irtue, nor excite 
it. 

Genius is chiefly exerted in historical pictures; and 
the art of the painter of portraits is often lost in the 5 
obscurity of his subject. But it is in painting as in 
life, what is greatest is not always best. I should 
grieve to see Reynolds transfer to heroes and to god- 
desses, to empty splendor and to airy fiction, that art 
which is now employed in diffusing friendship, in re- 10 
viving tenderness, in quickening the affections of the 
absent, and continuing the presence of the dead. 

Yet in a nation great and opulent there is room, and 
ought to be patronage, for an art like that of painting 
through all its diversities; and it is to be wished that 15 
the reward now offered for an historical picture may 
excite an honest emulation, and give beginning to an 
English school. 

It is not very easy to find an action or event that 
can be efficaciously represented by a painter. 20 

He must have an action not successive but instan- 
taneous; for the time of a picture is a single moment. 
For this reason the death of Hercules cannot well be 
painted, though at the first view it flatters the imagina- 
tion with very glittering ideas : the gloomy mountain 25 
overhanging the sea, and covered with trees, some bend- 
ing to the wind, and some torn from their roots by 
the raging hero; the violence with which he rends from 
his shoulders the envenomed garment ; the propriety with 
which his muscular nakedness may be displayed ; the 30 
death of Lycas whirled from the promontory; the gi- 
gantic presence of Philoctetes ; the blaze of the fatal pile, 
which the deities behold with grief and terror from the 
sky. 

All these images fill the mind, but will not compose a 35 
picture, because they cannot be united in a single mo- 
ment. Hercules must have rent his flesh at one time, 



THE IDLER 197 

ar«d tossed Lycas into the air at another; he must first 
tear up the trees, and then lie down upon the pile. 

The action must be circumstantial and distinct. There 
is a passage in the Iliad which cannot be read without 
5 strong emotions. A Trojan prince, seized by Achilles 
in the battle, falls at his feet, and in moving terms 
supplicates for life. ' How can a wretch like thee/ says 
the haughty Greek, i entreat to live, when thou knowest 
that the time must come when Achilles is to die ? ' 

10 This cannot be painted, because no peculiarity of at- 
titude or disposition can so supply the place of lan- 
guage as to impress the sentiment. 

The event painted must be such as excites passion, 
and different passions in the several actors, or a tumult 

15 of contending passions in the chief. 

Perhaps the discovery of Ulysses by his nurse is of 
this kind. The surprise of the nurse mingled with joy; 
that of Ulysses checked by prudence, and clouded by 
solicitude; and the distinctness of the action by which 

20 the scar is found; all concur to complete the sub- 
ject. But the picture, having only two figures, will 
want variety. 

A much nobler assemblage may be furnished by the 
death of Epaminondas. The mixture of gladness and 

25 grief in the face of the messenger who brings his dying 
general an account of the victory; the various passions 
of the attendants; the sublimity of composure in the 
hero, while the dart is by his own command drawn 
from his side, and the faint gleam of satisfaction that 

30 diffuses itself over the languor of death, are worthy of 
that pencil which yet I do not wish to see employed upon 
them. 

If the design were not too multifarious and ex- 
tensive, I should wish that our painters would attempt 

85 the dissolution of the Parliament by Cromwell. The 
point of time may be chosen when Cromwell, looking 
round the Pandemonium with contempt, ordered the 



198 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

bauble to be taken away; and Harrison laid hands on 
the Speaker to drag hirn from the chair. 

The various appearances which rage, and terror, and 
astonishment, and guilt, might exhibit in the faces of 
that hateful assembly, of whom the principal persons 5 
may be faithfully drawn from portraits or prints; the 
irresolute repugnance of some, the hypocritical sub- 
missions of others, the ferocious insolence of Cromwell, 
the rugged brutality of Harrison, and the general trepi- 
dation of fear and wickedness, would, if some proper 10 
disposition could be contrived, make a picture of un- 
exampled variety, and irresistible instruction. 

No. 59. Saturday, June 2, 1759 

In the common enjoyments of life, we cannot very 
liberally indulge the present hour, but by anticipating 
part of the pleasure which might have relieved the 15 
tediousness of another day; and any uncommon exertion 
of strength, or perseverance in labor, is succeeded by 
a long interval of languor and weariness. Whatever 
advantage we snatch beyond the certain portion allotted 
us by nature, is like money spent before it is due, 20 
which at the time of regular payment will be missed and 
regretted. 

Fame, like all other things which are supposed to give 
or to increase happiness, is dispensed with the same 
equality of distribution. He that is loudly praised will 25 
be clamorously censured; he that rises hastily into fame 
will be in danger of sinking suddenly into oblivion. 

Of many writers who filled their age with wonder, 
and whose names we find celebrated in the books of their 
contemporaries, the works are now no longer to be seen, 30 
or are seen only amidst the lumber of libraries which 
are seldom visited, where they lie only to show the 
deceitfulness of hope, and the uncertainty of honor. 

Of the decline of reputation many causes may be 



THE IDLER 199 

assigned. It is commonly lost because it never was 
deserved; and was conferred at first, not by the suffrage 
of criticism, but by the fondness of friendship, or ser- 
vility of flattery. The great and popular are very 
5 freely applauded ; but all soon grow weary of echoing 
to each other a name which has no other claim to notice, 
but that many mouths are pronouncing it at once. 

But many have lost the final reward of their labors, 
because they were too hasty to enjoy it. They have 

10 laid hold on recent occurrences, and eminent names, and 
delighted their readers with allusions and remarks, in 
which all were interested, and to which all therefore 
were attentive. But the effect ceased with its cause; 
the time quickly came when new events drove the former 

15 from memory, when the vicissitudes of the world brought 
new hopes and fears, transferred the love and hatred 
of the public to other agents, and the writer, whose 
works were no longer assisted by gratitude or resent- 
ment, was left to the cold regard of idle curiosity. 

20 He that writes upon general principles, or delivers 
universal truths, may hope to be often read, because 
his work will be equally useful at all times and in 
every country; but he cannot expect it to be received 
with eagerness, or to spread with rapidity, because de- 

25 sire can have no particular stimulation : that which is 
to be loved long, must be loved with reason rather 
than with passion. He that lays out his labors upon 
temporary subjects easily finds readers, and quickly 
loses them; for what should make the book valued when 

30 its subject is no more*? 

These observations will show the reason why the 
poem of Hudibras is almost forgotten, however em- 
bellished with sentiments and diversified with allusions, 
however bright with wit, and however solid with truth. 

35 The hypocrisy which it detected, and the folly which 
it ridiculed, have long vanished from public notice. 
Those who had felt the mischief of discord, and the 



200 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

tyranny of usurpation, read it with rapture, for every 
line brought back to memory something known, and 
gratified resentment by the just censure of something 
hated. But the book which was once quoted by princes, 
and which supplied conversation to all the assemblies 5 
of the gay and witty, is now seldom mentioned, and 
even by those that affect to mention it, is seldom read. 
So vainly is wit lavished upon fugitive topics, so little 
can architecture secure duration when the ground is 
false! 10 

No. 60. Saturday, June 9, 1759 

Criticism is a study by which men grow important 
and formidable at a very small expense. The power 
of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, 
and the labor of learning those sciences which may, 
by mere labor, be obtained, is too great to be willingly 15 
endured; but every man can exert such judgment as he 
has upon the works of others; and he whom nature 
has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet 
support his vanity by the name of a critic. 

I hope it will give comfort to great numbers who 20 
are passing through the world in obscurity, when I 
inform them how easily distinction may be obtained. 
All the other powers of literature are coy and haughty; 
they must be long courted, and at last are not always 
gained ; but Criticism is a goddess easy of access, and 25 
forward of advance, who will meet the slow, and en- 
courage the timorous; the want of meaning she supplies 
with words, and the want of spirit she recompenses 
with malignity. 

This profession has one recommendation peculiar to 30 
itself, that it gives vent to malignity without real mis- 
chief. No genius was ever blasted by the breath of 
critics. The poison which, if confined, would have burst 
the heart, fumes away in empty hisses, and malice is 






THE IDLER 201 

set at ease with very little danger to merit. The critic 
is the only man whose triumph is without another's 
pain, and whose greatness does not rise upon another's 
ruin. 
5 To a study at once so easy and so reputable, so 
malicious and so harmless, it cannot be necessary to 
invite iny readers by a long or labored exhortation; it 
is sufficient, since all would be critics if they could, to 
show by one eminent example, that all can be critics if 

10 they will. 

Dick Minim, after the common course of puerile 
studies, in which he was no great proficient, was put 
an apprentice to a brewer, with whom he had lived 
two years, when his uncle died in the city, and left 

15 him a large fortune in the stocks. Dick had for six 
months before used the company of the lower players, 
of whom he had learned to scorn a trade, and, being 
now at liberty to follow his genius, he resolved to be 
a man of wit and humor. That he might be piroperly 

20 initiated in his new character, he frequented the coffee- 
houses near the theatres, where he listened very dili- 
gently, day after day, to those who talked of language 
and sentiments, and unities and catastrophes, till by 
slow degrees he began to think that he understood some- 

25 thing of the stage, and hoped in time to talk himself. 

But he did not trust so much to natural sagacity 

as wholly to neglect the help of books. When the 

theatres were shut, he retired to Richmond with a few 

select writers, whose opinions he impressed upon his 

30 memory by unwearied diligence; and, when he returned 
with other wits to the town, was able to tell, in very 
proper phrases, that the chief business of art is to 
copy nature; that a perfect writer is not to be expected, 
because genius decays as judgment increases; that the 

35 great art is the art of blotting ; and that, according 
to the rule of Horace, every piece should be kept nine 
years. 



202 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

Of the great authors he now began to display the 
characters, laying down, as an universal position, that 
all had beauties and defects. His opinion was that 
Shakspeare, committing himself wholly to the impulse 
of nature, wanted that correctness which learning would 5 
have given him; and that Johnson, trusting to learning, 
did not sufficiently cast his eye on nature. He blamed 
the stanza of Spenser, and could not bear the hex- 
ameters of Sidney. Denham and Waller he held the 
first reformers of English numbers ; and thought that 10 
if Waller could have obtained the strength of Denham, 
or. Denham the sweetness of Waller, there had been 
nothing wanting to complete a poet. He often ex- 
pressed his commiseration of Dryden's poverty, and his 
indignation at the age which suffered him to write for 15 
bread; he repeated with rapture the first lines of All 
for Love, but wondered at the corruption of taste which 
could bear any thing so unnatural as rhyming tragedies. 
In Otway he found uncommon powers of moving the 
passions, but was disgusted by his general negligence, 20 
and blamed him for making a conspirator his hero ; 
and never concluded his disquisition without remarking 
how happily the sound of the clock is made to alarm 
the audience. Southern would have been his favorite, 
but that he mixes comic with tragic scenes, intercepts 25 
the natural course of the passions, and fills the mind 
with a wild confusion of mirth and melancholy. The 
versification of Rowe he thought too melodious for the 
stage, and too little varied in different passions. He 
made it the great fault of Congreve, that all his persons 30 
were wits, and that he always wrote with more art 
than nature. He considered Cato rather as a poem than 
a play, and allowed Addison to be the complete master 
of allegory and grave humor, but paid no great defer- 
ence to him as a critic. He thought the chief merit 35 
of Prior was in his easy tales and lighter poems, though 
he allowed that his Solomon had many noble sentiments 



THE IDLER 203 

elegantly expressed. In Swift he discovered an inimi- 
table vein of irony, and an easiness which all would hope 
and few would attain. Pope he was inclined 'to degrade 
from a poet to a versifier, and thought his numbers 
5 rather luscious than sweet. He often lamented the 
neglect of Phcedra and Hippolytus, and wished to see 
the stage under better regulations. 

These assertions passed commonly uncontradicted; 
and if now and then an opponent started up, he was 

10 quickly repressed by the suffrages of the company, and 
Minim went away from every dispute with elation 
of heart and increase of confidence. 

He now grew conscious of his abilities, and began to 
talk of the present state of dramatic poetry; wondered 

15 what was become of the comic genius which supplied 
our ancestors with wit and pleasantry, and why no 
writer could be found that durst now venture beyond 
a farce. He saw no reason for thinking that the vein 
of humor was exhausted, since we live in a country 

20 where liberty surfers every character to spread itself 
to its utmost bulk, and which therefore produces more 
originals than all the rest of the world together. Of 
tragedy he concluded business to be the soul, and yet 
often hinted that love predominates too much upon the 

25 modern stage. 

He was now an acknowledged critic, and had his own 
seat in a coffee-house, and headed a party in the pit. 
Minim has more vanity than ill-nature, and seldom de- 
sires to do much mischief; he will, perhaps, murmur a 

30 little in the ear of him that sits next him, but endeavors 
to influence the audience to favor, by clapping when an 
actor exclaims, ' Ye gods!' or laments the misery of 
his country. 

By degrees he was admitted to rehearsals; and many 

35 of his friends are of opinion that our present poets 
are indebted to him for their happiest thoughts; by 
his contrivance the bell was rung twice in Barbarossa, 



204 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

and by his persuasion the author of Cleone concluded 
his play without a couplet ; for what can be more absurd, 
said Minim, than that part of a play should be rhymed, 
and part written in blank verse? And by what acquisi- 
tion of faculties is the speaker, who never could find 5 
rhymes before, enabled to rhyme at the conclusion of 
an act? 

He is the great investigator of hidden beauties, and 
is particularly delighted when he finds ( the sound an 
echo to the sense/ He has read all our poets with 10 
particular attention to this delicacy of versification, 
and wonders at the supineness with which their works 
have been hitherto perused, so that no man has found 
the sound of a drum in this distich : 

And pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, 15 

Was beat with fist instead of a stick ; 

and that the wonderful lines upon honor and a bubble 
have hitherto passed without notice: 

Honor is like the glassy bubble 

Which costs philosophers such trouble ; 20 

Where, one part cracked, the whole does fly, 

And wits are cracked to find out why. 

In these verses, says Minim, we have two striking 
accommodations of the sound to the sense. It is im- 
possible to utter the two lines emphatically without 25 
an act like that which they describe; bubble and trouble 
causing a momentary inflation of the cheeks by the 
retention of the breath, which is afterwards forcibly 
emitted, as in the practice of blotving bubbles. But the 
greatest excellence is in the third line, which is cracked 30 
in the middle, to express a crack, and then shivers 
into monosyllables. Yet has this diamond lain neg- 
lected with common stones, and among the innumerable 
admirers of Hudibras the observation of this superla- 
tive passage has been reserved for the sagacity of Minim. 35 



THE IDLER 205 

No. 61. Saturday, June 16, 1759 

Mr. Minim had now advanced himself to the zenith 
of critical reputation; when he was in the pit, every 
eye in the boxes was fixed upon him; when he entered 
his coffee-house, he was surrounded by circles of can- 
5 didates, who passed their novitiate of literature under 
his tuition: his opinion was asked by all who had no 
opinion of tHeir~own, and yet loved to debate and de- 
cide; and no composition was supposed to pass in safety 
to posterity, till it had been secured by Minim's appro- 

10 bation. 

Minim professes great admiration of the wisdom and 
munificence by which the academies of the continent 
were raised; and often wishes for some standard of 
taste, for some tribunal, to which merit may appeal 

15 from caprice, prejudice, and malignity. He has formed 
a plan for an academy of criticism, where every work 
of imagination may be read before it is printed, and 
which shall authoritatively direct the theatres what 
pieces to receive or reject, to exclude or to revive. 

20 Such an institution would, in Dick's opinion, spread 
the fame of English literature over Europe, and make 
London the metropolis of elegance and politeness, the 
place to which the learned and ingenious of all countries 
would repair for instruction and improvement, and 

25 where nothing would any longer be applauded or en- 
dured that was not conformed to the nicest rules, and 
finished with the highest elegance. 

Till some happy conjunction of the planets shall 
dispose our princes or ministers to make themselves 

30 immortal by such an academy, Minim contents himself 
to preside four nights in a week in a critical society 
selected by himself, where he is heard without con- 
tradiction, and whence his judgment is disseminated 
through i the great vulgar and the small.' 

35 When he is placed in the chair of criticism, he de- 



i 



206 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

clares loudly for the noble simplicity of our ancestors, 
in opposition to the petty refinements and ornamental 
luxuriance. Sometimes he is sunk in despair, and per- 
ceives false delicacy daily gaining ground, and some- 
times brightens his countenance with a gleam of hope, 5 
and predicts the revival of the true sublime. He then 
fulminates his loudest censures against the monkish bar- 
barity of rhyme; wonders how beings that pretend to 
reason can be pleased with one line always ending like 
another; tells how unjustly and unnaturally sense is 10 
sacrificed to sound; how often the best thoughts are 
mangled by the necessity of confining or extending them 
to the dimensions of a couplet; and rejoices that genius 
has, in our days, shaken off the shackles which had 
encumbered it so long. Yet he allows that rhyme may 15 
sometimes be borne, if the lines be often broken, and 
the pauses judiciously diversified. 

From blank verse he makes an easy transition to 
Milton, whom he produces as an example of the slow 
advance of lasting reputation. Milton is the only writer 20 
in whose books Minim can read for ever without weari- 
ness. What cause it is that exempts this pressure from 
satiety he has long and diligently inquired, and believes 
it to consist in the perpetual variation of the numbers, 
by which the ear is gratified and the attention awakened. 25 
The lines that are commonly thought rugged and un- 
musical, he conceives to have been written to temper 
the melodious luxury of the rest, or to express things 
by a proper cadence, for he scarcely finds a verse that 
has not this favorite beauty ; he declares that he could 30 
shiver in a hot-house when he reads that 

the ground 
Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of fire ; 

and that, when Milton bewails his blindness, the verse, 

So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs, 35 



THE IDLER 207 

has, be knows not how, something that strikes him with 
an obscure sensation, like that which be fancies would 
be felt from the sound of darkness. 

Minim is not so confident of his rules of judgment 
5 as not very eagerly to catch new light from the name 
of the author. He is commonly so prudent as to spare 
those whom he cannot resist, unless, as will sometimes 
happen, he finds the public combined against them. 
But a fresh pretender to fame he is strongly inclined 

10 to censure, till his own honor requires that he com- 
mend him. Till he knows the success of a composition, 
he intrenches himself in general terms: there are some 
new thoughts and beautiful passages, but there is like- 
wise much which he would have advised the author 

15 to expunge. He has several favorite epithets, of which 
he has never settled the meaning, but which are very 
commodiously applied to books which he has not read, 
or cannot understand. One is manly, another is dry, 
another stiff, and another flimsy ; sometimes he discovers 

20 delicacy of style, and sometimes meets with strange 
expressions. 

He is never so great, or so happy, as when a youth 
of promising parts is brought to receive his directions 
for the prosecution of his studies. He then puts on a 

25 very serious air ; he advises the pupil to read none 
but the best authors, and when he finds one congenial 
to his own mind, to study his beauties, but avoid his 
faults; and, when he sits down to write, to consider 
how his favorite author would think at the present 

30 time on the present occasion. He exhorts him to catch 
those moments when he finds his thoughts expanded 
and his genius exalted, but to take care lest imagination 
hurry him beyond the bounds of nature. He holds 
diligence the mother of success; yet enjoins him, with 

35 great earnestness, not to read more than he can digest, 
and not to confuse his mind b}^ pursuing studies of 
contrary tendencies. He tells him that every man has 



208 SELECTIONS FEOM JOHNSON 

his genius, and that Cicero could never be a poet. The 
boy retires illuminated, resolves to follow his genius, 
and to think how Milton would have thought ; and Minim 
feasts upon his own beneficence, till another day brings 
another pupil. 5 

No. 88. Saturday, December 22, 1759 

When the philosophers of the last age were first 
congregated into the Royal Society, great expectations 
were raised of the sudden progress of useful arts; the 
time was supposed to be near, when engines should 
turn by a perpetual motion, and health be secured by 10 
.the universal medicine; when learning should be facili- 
tated by a real character, and commerce extended by 
ships which could reach their ports in defiance of the 
tempest. 

But improvement is naturally slow. The Society met 15 
and parted without any visible diminution of the mis- 
eries of life. The gout and stone were still painful, 
the ground that was not plowed brought no harvest, 
and neither oranges nor grapes would grow upon the 
hawthorn. At last, those who were disappointed began 20 
to be angry; those likewise who hated innovation were 
glad to gain an opportunity of ridiculing men who had 
depreciated, perhaps Avith too much arrogance, the 
knowledge of antiquity. And it appears from some 
of their earliest apologies, that the philosophers felt 25 
with great sensibility the unwelcome importunities of 
those who were daily asking, 'What have ye done?' 

The truth is, that little had been clone compared with 
what fame had been suffered to promise; and the ques- 
tion could only be answered by general apologies and 30 
by new hopes, which, when they were frustrated, gave 
a new occasion to the same vexatious inquiry. 

This fatal question has disturbed the quiet of many 
other minds. He that in the latter part of his life 



THE IDLER 209 

too strictly inquires what lie has done, can very seldom 
receive from his own heart such an account as will 
give him satisfaction. 

We do not indeed so often disappoint others as our- 
5 selves. We not only think more highly than others of 
our own abilities, but allow ourselves to form hopes 
which we never communicate, and please our thoughts 
with employments which none ever will allot us, and 
with elevations to which we are never expected to rise; 

10 and when our days and years have passed away in 
common business or common amusements, and we find 
at last that we have suffered our purposes to sleep till 
the time of action is past, we are reproached only by 
our own reflections; neither our friends nor our enemies 

15 wonder that we live and die like the rest of mankind; 
that we live without notice, and die without memorial; 
they know not what task we had proposed, and there- 
fore cannot discern whether it is finished. 

He that compares what he has done with what he 

20 has left undone, will feel the effect which must always 
follow the comparison of imagination with reality; he 
will look with contempt on his own unimportance, and 
wonder to what purpose he came into the world; he 
will repine that he shall leave behind him no evidence 

25 of his having been, that he has added nothing to the 
system of life, but has glided from youth to age among 
the crowd, without any effort for distinction. 

Man is seldom willing to let fall the opinion of his 
own dignity, or to believe that he does little only be- 

30 cause every individual is a very little thing. He is 
better content to want diligence than power, and sooner 
confesses the depravity of his will than the imbecility 
of his nature. 

From this mistaken notion of human greatness it 

35 proceeds that many who pretend to have made great 
advances in wisdom so loudly declare that they despise 
themselves. If I had ever found any of the self -con- 



210 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

temners much irritated or pained by the consciousness 
of their meanness, I should have given them consola- 
tion by observing, that a little more than nothing is 
as much as can be expected from a being who with 
respect to the multitudes about him is himself little more 5 
than nothing. Every man is obliged by the Supreme 
Master of the universe to improve all the opportunities 
of good which are afforded hini, and to keep in con- 
tinual activity such abilities as are bestowed upon him. 
But he has no reason to repine; though his abilities 10 
are small and his opportunities few. He that has im- 
proved the virtue, or advanced the happiness, of one 
fellow-creature, he that has ascertained a single moral 
proposition, or added one useful experiment to natural 
knowledge, may be contented with his own performance, 15 
and, with respect to mortals like himself, may demand, 
like Augustus, to be dismissed at his departure with 
applause. 

No. 101. Saturday, March 22, 1760 

Omar, the son of Hassan, had passed seventy-five 
years in honor and prosperity. The favor of three 20 
successive caliphs had filled his house with gold and 
silver; and whenever he appeared the benedictions of 
the people proclaimed his passage. 

Terrestrial happiness is of short continuance. The 
brightness of the flame is wasting its fuel ; the fragrant 25 
flower is passing away in its own odors. The vigor of 
Omar began to fail, the curls of beauty fell from his 
head, strength departed from his hands, and agility 
from his feet. He gave back to the caliph the keys 
of trust and the seals of secrecy ; and sought no other 30 
pleasure for the remains of life than the converse of 
the wise, and the gratitude of the good. 

The powers of his mind were yet unimpaired. His 
chamber was filled by visitants, eager to catch the dictates 



THE IDLER 211 

of experience, and officious to pay the tribute of admira- 
tion. Caled, the son of the viceroy of Egypt, entered 
every day early, and retired late. He was beautiful 
and eloquent; Omar admired his wit, and loved his 
5 docility. i Tell me/ said Caled, i thou to whose voice 
nations have listened, and whose w T isdom is known to 
the extremities of Asia, tell me how I may resemble 
Omar the prudent. The arts by which you have gained 
power and preserved it, are to you no longer necessary 

10 or useful ; impart to me the secret of your conduct, 
and teach me the plan upon which your wisdom has 
built your fortune.' 

' Young man/ said Omar, ^ it is of little use to form 
plans of life. When I took my first survey of the 

15 world, in my twentieth year, having considered the 
various conditions of mankind, in the hour of solitude 
I said thus to myself, leaning against a cedar which 
spread its branches over my head: Seventy years are 
allowed to man; I have yet fifty remaining; ten years 

20 1 will allot to the attainment of knowledge, and ten 
I will pass in foreign countries; I shall be learned, 
and therefore be honored; every city will shout at 
my arrival, and every student will solicit my friendship. 
Twenty years thus passed will store my mind with 

25 images which I shall be busy through the rest of my 
life in combining and comparing. I shall revel in 
inexhaustible accumulations of intellectual riches; I 
shall find new pleasures for every moment, and shall 
never more be weary of myself. I will, however, not 

30 deviate too far from the beaten track of life, but will 
try what can be found in female delicacy. I will marry 
a wife beautiful as the Houries, and wise as Zobeide; 
with her I will live twenty years within the suburbs 
of Bagdat, in every pleasure that wealth can purchase, 

35 and fancy can invent. I will then retire to a rural 
dwelling, pass my last days in obscurity and contempla- 
tion, and lie silently down on the bed of death. Through 



212 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

my life it shall be my settled resolution, that I will 
never depend upon the smile of princes ; that I will 
never stand exposed to the artifices of courts; I will 
never pant for public honors, nor disturb my quiet 
with affairs of state. Such was my scheme of life, 5 
which I impressed indelibly upon my memory. 

The first part of my ensuing time was to be spent in 
search of knowledge; and I know not how I was di- 
verted from my design. I had no visible impediments 
without, nor any ungovernable passions within. I re- 10 
garded knowledge as the highest honor and the most 
engaging pleasure; yet clay stole upon day, and month 
glided after month, till I found that seven years of 
the first ten had vanished, and left nothing behind them. 
I now postponed my purpose of travelling ; for why 15 
should I go abroad while so much remained to be learned 
at home? I immured myself for four years, and studied 
the laws of the empire. The fame of my skill reached 
the judges; I was found able to speak upon doubtful 
questions, and was commanded to stand at the foot- 20 
stool of the caliph. I was heard with attention, I was 
consulted with confidence, and the love of praise fastened 
on my heart. 

I still wished to see distant countries, listened with 
rapture to the relations of travellers, and resolved some 25 
time to ask my dismission, that I might feast my soul 
with novelty; but my presence was always necessary, 
and the stream of business hurried me along. Some- 
times I was afraid lest I should be charged with in- 
gratitude ; but I still proposed to travel, and therefore 30 
would not confine myself by marriage. 

In my fiftieth year I began to suspect that the time 
of travelling was past, and thought it best to lay hold 
on the felicity yet in my power, and indulge myself in 
domestic pleasures. But at fifty no man easily finds 35 
a woman beautiful as the Houries, and wise as Zobeide. 
I inquired and rejected, consulted and deliberated, till 



THE IDLER 213 

the sixty-second year made me ashamed of gazing upon 
girls. I had now nothing left but retirement, and for 
retirement I never found a time, till disease forced me 
from public employment. 
5 Such was my scheme, and such has been its conse- 
quence. With an insatiable thirst for knowledge, I 
trifled away the years of improvement; with a restless 
desire of seeing different countries, I have always re- 
sided in the same city; with the highest expectation 
10 of connubial felicity, I have lived unmarried; and with 
unalterable resolutions of contemplative retirement, 1 
am going to die within the walls of Bagdat. 



PREFATORY NOTE ON THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 

Johnson's Life of Savage, though usually included among 
his Lives of the Poets, was written in 1744, long before 
any thought of that larger undertaking, and midway be- 
tween his London and The Vanity of Human Wishes. 
The whole was written in thirty-six hours. ' I wrote 
forty-eight of the printed octavo pages of the Life of 
Savage at a sitting ; but then I sat up all night ' ( Life 
1. 166). He was wretchedly poor. His wife, after they 
had sold all they had, was forced to take refuge with a 
friend. Johnson, too shabby to appear in company, was 
allowed to dine behind a screen at the house of his pub- 
lisher, that he might hear his book praised in the table- 
talk of Cave's guests. Savage and he were comrades in 
destitution. 

The book was highly praised; but what was worth more, 
some eight years later it won Johnson the friendship of 
Sir Joshua Reynolds, then just entering upon his great career. 
* He met with it in Devonshire, knowing nothing of its 
author, and began to read it while he was standing with 
his arm leaning against a chimney-piece. It seized his at- 
tention so strongly, that, not being able to lay the book 
down till he had finished it, when he attempted to move, 
he found his arm totally benumbed' {Life 1. 165). 

The Life of Savage has the advantage over Johnson's 
other biographical writings that he knew Savage well and 
loved him. Aside from Savage's impudence and irresponsi- 
bility, the two men had many traits in common. John- 
son's account is full of feeling, though sometimes a little 
too much governed by consciousness of his championship 
for his irregular friend. 



214 



Cbe Xtfe of Savage 

It has been observed in all ages, that the advantages 
of nature or of fortune have contributed very little 
to the promotion of happiness; and that those whom 
the splendor of their rank, or the extent of their ca- 
5 pacity, have placed upon the summits of human life, 
have not often given any just occasion to envy in those 
who look up to them from a lower station; whether it 
be that apparent superiority incites great designs, and 
great designs are naturally liable to fatal miscarriages, 

10 or that the general lot of mankind is misery, and the 
misfortunes of those whose eminence drew upon them 
an universal attention, have been more carefully re- 
corded, because they were more generally observed, and 
have in reality been only more conspicuous than those 

15 of others, not more frequent, or more severe. 

That affluence and power, advantages extrinsic and 
adventitious, and therefore easily separable from those 
by whom they are possessed, should very often flatter 
the mind with expectations of felicity which they can- 

20 not give raises no astonishment; but it seems rational 
to hope, that intellectual greatness should produce bet- 
ter effects ; that minds qualified for great attainments 
should first endeavor their own benefit; and that they, 
who are most able to teach others the way to happiness, 

25 should with most certainty follow it themselves. 

But this expectation, however plausible, has been very 
frequently disappointed. The heroes of literary as well 
as civil history, have been very often no less remarkable 
for what they have suffered, than for what they have- 

215 



216 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

achieved; and volumes have been written only to enum- 
erate the miseries of the learned, and relate their un- 
happy lives, and untimely deaths. 

To these mournful narratives, I am about to add 
the Life of Richard Savage, a man whose writings en- 5 
title him to an eminent rank in the classes of learning, 
and whose misfortunes claim a degree of compassion, 
not always due to the unhappy, as they were often the 
consequences of the crimes of others, rather than_ his 
own. 10 

In the year 1697, Anne, Countess of Macclesfield, hav- 
ing lived for some time upon very uneasy terms with 
her husband, thought a public confession of adultery the 
most obvious and expeditious method of obtaining her 
liberty; and therefore declared, that the child with 15 
which she was then great, was begotten by the Earl 
Rivers. This, as may be imagined, made her husband 
no less desirous of a separation than herself, and he 
prosecuted his design in the most effectual manner; 
for he applied not to the ecclesiastical courts for a 20 
divorce, but to the Parliament for an act by which his 
marriage might be dissolved, the nuptial contract totally 
annulled, and the children of his wife illegitimated. 
This act, after the usual deliberation, he obtained, 
though without the approbation of some, who considered 25 
marriage as an affair only cognizable by ecclesiastical 
judges; * and on March 3d was separated from his wife, 
whose fortune, which was very great, was repaid her, 
and who having, as well as her husband, the liberty of 



1 This year was inade remarkable by the dissolution of a 
marriage solemnized in the face of the church. Salmon's 
Review. 

The following protest is registered in the books of the 
House of Lords : — 
Dissentient. 
Because we conceive that this is the first bill of that nature 
that hath passed, where there was not a divorce first obtained 
in the spiritual court ; which we look upon as an ill precedent, 
and may be of dangerous consequence in the future. 

Halifax, Rqcbesteb, 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 217 

making another choice, was in a short time married to 
Colonel Brett. 

While the Earl of Macclesfield was prosecuting this 
affair, his wife was, on the 10th of January, 1697-8, 
5 delivered of a son; and the Earl Rivers, by appearing 
to consider him as his own, left none any reason to 
doubt of the sincerity of her declaration; for he was 
his godfather, and gave him his own name, which was 
by his direction inserted in the register of St. Andrew's 

10 parish in Holborn, but unfortunately left him to the 
care of his mother, whom, as she was now set free from 
her husband, he probably imagined likely to treat with 
great tenderness the child that had contributed to so 
pleasing an event. It is not indeed easy to discover 

15 what motives could be found to overbalance that natural 
affection of a parent, or what interest could be pro- 
moted by neglect or cruelty. The dread of shame or 
of poverty, by which some wretches have been incited 
to abandon or to murder their children, cannot be sup- 

20 posed to have affected a woman who had proclaimed 
her crimes and solicited reproach, and on whom the 
clemency of the legislature had undeservedly bestowed 
a fortune, which would have been very little diminished 
by the expenses which the care of her child could have 

25 brought upon her. It was therefore not likely that 
she would be wicked without temptation; that she would 
look upon her son from his birth with a kind of resent- 
ment and abhorrence; and, instead of supporting, as- 
sisting, and defending him, delight to see him struggling 

30 with misery, or that she would take every opportunity 
of aggravating his misfortunes, and obstructing his re- 
sources, and with an implacable and restless cruelty 
continue her persecution from the first hour of his life 
to the last. 

35 But whatever were her motives, no sooner was her 
son born, than she discovered a resolution of disowning 
him; and in a very short time removed him from her 



218 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

sight, by committing him to the care of a poor woman, 
whom she directed to educate him as her own, and en- 
joined never to inform him of his true parents. 

Such was the beginning of the life of Richard Savage. 
Born with a legal * claim to honor and to affluence, he 5 
was in two months illegitimated by the Parliament, 
and disowned by his mother, doomed to poverty and 
obscurity, and launched upon the ocean of life, only 
that he might be swallowed by its quicksands, or dashed 
upon its rocks. 10 

His mother could not indeed infect others with the 
same cruelty. As it was impossible to avoid the in- 
quiries which the curiosity or tenderness of her relations 
made after her child, she was obliged to give some 
account of the measures that she had taken ; and her 15 
mother, the Lady Mason, whether in approbation of her 
design, or to prevent more criminal contrivances, engaged 
to transact Avith the nurse, to pay her for her care, and 
to superintend the education of the child. 

In this charitable office she was assisted by his god- 20 
mother Mrs. Lloyd, who, while she lived, always looked 
upon him with that tenderness which the barbarity of 
his mother made peculiarly necessary; but her death, 
which happened in his tenth year, was another of the 
misfortunes of his childhood ; for though she kindly 25 
endeavored to alleviate his loss by a legacy of three 
hundred pounds, yet, as he had none to prosecute his 
claim, to shelter him from oppression, or call in laAV 
to the assistance of justice, her will was eluded by the 
executors, and no part of the money was ever paid. 30 

He was, however, not yet wholly abandoned. The 
Lady Mason still continued her care, and directed him 
to be placed at a small grammar-school near St. Aiban's, 
where he was called by the name of his nurse, without 
the least intimation that he had a claim to any other. 35 

Here he was initiated in literature, and passed through 
several of the classes, with what rapidity or with what 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 219 

applause cannot now be known. As he always spoke 
with respect of his master, it is probable that the mean 
rank in which he then appeared did not hinder his 
genius from being distinguished, or his industry from 
5 being rewarded; and if in so low a state he obtained 
distinction and rewards, it is not likely that they were 
gained but by genius and industry. 

It is very reasonable to conjecture that his applica- 
tion was equal to his abilities, because his improvement 

10 was more than proportioned to the opportunities which 
he enjoyed; nor can it be doubted that if his earliest 
productions had been preserved, like those of happier 
students, we might in some have found vigorous sallies 
of that sprightly humor which distinguishes The Author 

15 to be let, and in others strong touches of that ardent 
imagination which painted the solemn scenes of The 
Wanderer. 

While he was thus cultivating his genius, his father 
the Earl Rivers was seized with a distemper, which in 

20 a short time put an end to his life. He had frequently 
inquired after his son, and had always been amused 
with fallacious and evasive answers; but, being now in 
his own opinion on his death-bed, he thought it his 
duty to provide for him among his other natural chil- 

25 dren, and therefore demanded a positive account of 
him, with an importunity not to be diverted or denied. 
His mother, who could no longer refuse an answer, 
determined at least to give such as should cut him off 
for ever from that happiness which competence affords, 

30 and therefore declared that he was dead; which is per- 
haps the first instance of a lie invented by a mother 
to deprive her son of a provision which was designed 
him by another, and which she could not expect her- 
self, though he should lose it. 

35 This was therefore an act of wickedness which could 
not be defeated, because it could not be suspected; the 
earl did not imagine that there could exist in a human 



220 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

form a mother that would ruin her son without enriching 
herself, and therefore bestowed upon some other person 
six thousand pounds, which he had in his will bequeathed 
to Savage. 

The same cruelty which incited his mother to inter- 5 
cept this provision which had been intended him, 
prompted her in a short time to another project, a 
project worthy of such a disposition. She endeavored 
to rid herself from the danger of being at any time 
made known to him, by sending him secretly to the 10 
American Plantations. 1 

By whose kindness this scheme was counteracted, or 
by. what interposition she was induced to lay aside her 
design, I know not; it is not improbable that the Lady 
Mason might persuade or compel her to desist, or per- 15 
haps she could not easily find accomplices wicked enough 
to concur in so cruel an action; for it may be conceived 
that those who had by a long gradation of guilt hard- 
ened their hearts against the sense of common wicked- 
ness, would yet be shocked at the design of a mother 20 
to expose her son to slavery and want, to expose him 
without interest, and without provocation; and Savage 
might on this occasion find protectors and advocates 
among those who had long traded in crimes, and whom 
compassion had never touched before, 25 

Being hindered, by whatever means, from banishing 
him into another country, she formed soon after a 
scheme for burying him in poverty and obscurity in his 
own; and, that his station of life, if not the place of 
his residence might keep him for ever at a distance from 30 
her, she ordered him to be placed with a shoemaker in 
Holborn, that, after the usual time of trial, he might 
become his apprentice. 2 

It is generally reported, that this project was for 
some time successful, and that Savage was employed at 35 

1 Savage's Preface to Ms Miscellany. 

2 im, 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 221 

the awl longer than he was willing to confess; nor was 
it perhaps any great advantage to him, that an un- 
expected discovery determined him to quit his occupa- 
tion. 
5 About this time his nurse, who had always treated 
him as her own son, died; and it was natural for him 
to take care of those effects which by her death were, 
as he imagined, become his own: he therefore went to 
her house, opened her boxes, and examined her papers, 

10 among which he found some letters written to her by 
the lady Mason, which informed him of his birth, and 
the reasons for which it was concealed. 

He was no longer satisfied with the employment which 
had been allotted him, but thought he had a right to 

15 share the affluence of his mother ; and therefore without 
scruple applied to her as her son, and made use of 
every art to awaken her tenderness, and attract her 
regard. But neither his letters, nor the interposition 
of those friends which his merit or his distress pro- 

20 cured him, made any impression upon her mind. She 
still resolved to neglect, though she could no longer dis- 
own him. 

It was to no purpose that he frequently solicited her 
to admit him to see her; she avoided him with the most 

25 vigilant precaution, and ordered him to be excluded 
from her house, by whomsoever he might be introduced, 
and what reason soever he might give for entering it. 

Savage was at the same time so touched with the dis- 
covery of his real mother, that it was his frequent prac- 

30 tice to walk in the dark evenings l for several hours 
before her door, in hopes of seeing her as she might 
come by accident to the window, or cross her apartment 
with a candle in her hand. 

But all his assiduity and tenderness were without 

35 effect, for he could neither soften her heart nor open 
her hand, and was reduced to the utmost miseries of 
1 See the Plain Dealer. 



222 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

want, while he was endeavoring to awaken the affec- 
tions of a mother. He was therefore obliged to seek 
some other means of support ; and, having no profession, 
became by necessity an author. 

At this time the attention of all the literary world was 5 
engrossed by the Bangorian controversy, which filled 
the press with pamphlets, and the coffee-houses with 
disputants. Of this subject, as most popular, he made 
choice for his first attempt, and, without any other 
knowledge of the question than he had casually col- 10 
lected from conversation, published a poem against the 
Bishop. 

What was the success or merit of this performance, 
I know not; it was probably lost among the innumerable 
pamphlets to which that dispute gave occasion. Mr. 15 
Savage was himself in a little time ashamed of it, and 
endeavored to suppress it, by destroying all the copies 
that he could collect. 

He then attempted a more gainful kind of writing, x 
and in his eighteenth year offered to the stage a comedy 20 
borrowed from a Spanish plot, which was refused by 
the players, and was therefore given by him to Mr. 
Bullock, who, having more interest, made some slight 
alterations, and brought it upon the stage under the 
title of Woman's a Riddle, 2 but allowed the unhappy 25 
author no part of the profit. 

Not discouraged, however, at his repulse, he wrote 
two years afterwards Love in a Veil, another comedy, 
borrowed likewise from the Spanish, but with little 
better success than before ; for though it was received 30 
and acted, yet it appeared so late in the year, that 
the author obtained no other advantage from it, than 
the acquaintance of Sir Richard Steele, and Mr. Wilks, 
by whom he was pitied, caressed, and relieved. 

Sir Richard Steele, having declared in his favor with 35 

1 Jacob's Lives of the Dramatic Poets. 

2 This play was printed first in 8vo. ; and afterwards in 12mo. 
the fifth edition. 



I 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 223 

all the ardor of benevolence which constituted his char- 
acter, promoted his interest with the utmost zeal, re- 
lated his misfortunes, applauded his merit, took all the 
opportunities of recommending him, and asserted, that 
5 * the inhumanity of his mother had given him a right 
to find every good man his father.' x 

Nor was Mr. Savage admitted to his acquaintance 
only, but to his confidence, of which he sometimes related 
an instance too extraordinary to be omitted, as it affords 

10 a very just idea of his patron's character. 

He was once desired by Sir Richard, with an air of 
the utmost importance, to come very early to his house 
the next morning. Mr. Savage came as he had prom- 
ised, found the chariot at the door, and Sir Richard 

15 waiting for him, and ready to go out. What was in- 
tended, and whither they were to go, Savage could not 
conjecture, and was not willing to inquire; but im- 
mediately seated himself with Sir Richard. The coach- 
man was ordered to drive, and they hurried with the 

20 utmost expedition to Hyde-Park-corner, where they 
stopped at a petty tavern, and retired to a private 
room. Sir Richard then informed him, that he intended 
to publish a pamphlet, and that he had desired him 
to come thither that he might write for him. They 

25 soon sat down to the work. Sir Richard dictated, and 
Savage wrote, till the dinner that had been ordered was 
put upon the table. Savage was surprised at the mean- 
ness of the entertainment, and after some hesitation 
ventured to ask for wine, which Sir Richard, not with- 

30 out reluctance, ordered to be brought. They then fin- 
ished their dinner, and proceeded in their pamphlet, 
which they concluded in the afternoon. 

Mr. Savage then imagined his task over, and expected 
that Sir Richard would call for the reckoning, and re- 

35 turn home; but his expectations deceived him, for Sir 
Richard told him that he was without money, and that 

1 Plain Dealer, 



224 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

the pamphlet must be sold before the dinner could be 
paid for; and Savage was therefore obliged to go and 
offer their new production to sale for two guineas, which 
with some difficulty he obtained. Sir Richard then re- 
turned home, having retired that day only to avoid his 5 
creditors, and composed the pamphlet only to discharge 
his reckoning. 

Mr. Savage related another fact equally uncommon, 
which, though it has no relation to his life, ought to 
be preserved. Sir Richard Steele having one day in- 10 
vited to his house a great number of persons of the 
first quality, they were surprised at the number of 
liveries which surrounded the table; and after dinner, 
when wine and mirth had set them free from the ob- 
servation of rigid ceremony, one of them inquired of 15 
Sir Richard, how such an expensive train of domestics 
could be consistent with his fortune. Sir Richard very 
frankly confessed that they were fellows of whom he 
would very willingly be rid. And being then asked 
why he did not discharge them, declared that they were 20 
bailiffs, who had introduced themselves with an execu- 
tion, and whom, since he could not send them away, he 
had thought it convenient to embellish with liveries, 
that they might do him credit while they staid. 

His friends were diverted with the expedient, and 25 
by paying the debt discharged their attendance, having 
obliged Sir Richard to promise that they should never 
again find him graced with a retinue of the same kind. 

Under such a tutor Mr. Savage was not likely to 
learn prudence or f rugality ; and perhaps many of the 30 
misfortunes which the want of those virtues brought 
upon him in the following parts of his life, might be 
justly imputed to so unimproving an example. 

Nor did the kindness of Sir Richard end in common 
favors. He proposed to have established him in some 35 
settled scheme of life, and to have contracted a kind of 
alliance with him, by marrying him to a natural daugh- 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 225 

ter, on whom lie intended to bestow a thousand pounds. 
But, though he was alwa} 7 s lavish of future bounties, 
he conducted his affairs in such a manner, that he was 
very seldom able to keep his promises, or execute his 
5 own intentions; and, as he was never able to raise the 
sum which he had offered, the marriage was delayed. 
In the mean time he was officiously informed, that Mr. 
Savage had ridiculed him; by which he was so much 
exasperated, that he withdrew the allowance which he 

10 had paid him, and never afterwards admitted him to 
his house. 

It is not indeed unlikely that Savage might by his im- 
prudence expose himself to the malice of a tale-bearer: 
for his patron had many follies, which, as his discern- 

15ment easily discovered, his imagination might some- 
times incite him to mention too ludicrously. A little 
knowledge of the world is sufficient to discover that such 
weakness is very common, and that there are few who 
do not sometimes, in the wantonness of thoughtless 

20 mirth, or the heat of transient resentment, speak of 
their friends and benefactors with levity and contempt, 
though in their cooler moments they want neither sense 
of their kindness, nor reverence for their virtue. The 
fault therefore of Mr. Savage was rather negligence 

25 than ingratitude. But Sir Richard must likewise be 
acquitted of severity, for who is there that can patiently 
bear contempt from one whom he has relieved and 
supported, whose establishment he has labored, and 
whose interest he has promoted? 

30 He was now again abandoned to fortune, without 
any other friend than Mr. Wilks, a man who, whatever 
were his abilities or skill as an actor, deserves at least 
to be remembered for his virtues, x which are not often 

1 As it is a loss to mankind when any good action is forgotten, 
I shall insert another instance of Mr. Wilks's generosity, very 
little known. Mr. Smith, a gentleman educated at Dublin, being 
hindered by an impediment in his pronunciation from engaging 
in orders, for which his friends designed him, left his own 
country, and came to London in quest of employment, but 



226 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

to be found in the world, and perhaps less often in 
his profession than in others. To be humane, generous, 
and candid, is a very high degree of merit in any case; 
but those qualities deserve still greater praise, when 
they are found in that condition which makes almost 5 
every other man, for whatever reason, contemptuous, 
insolent, petulant, selfish, and brutal. 

As Mr. Wilks was one of those to whom calamity 
seldom complained without relief, he naturally took an 
unfortunate wit into his protection, and not only as- 10 
sisted him in any casual distresses, but continued an 
equal and steady kindness to the time of his death. 

,By his interposition Mr. Savage once obtained from 
his mother fifty pounds, and a promise of one hundred 
and fifty more ; but it was the fate of this unhappy 15 
man, that few promises of any advantage to him were 
performed. His mother was infected, among others, 
with the general madness of the South Sea traffic; and, 
having been disappointed in her expectations, refused 
to pay what perhaps nothing but the prospect of sud- 20 
den affluence prompted her to promise. 

Being thus obliged to depend upon the friendship of 
Mr. Wilks, he was consequently an assiduous frequenter 
of the theatres; and in a short' time the amusements 
of the stage took such possession of his mind, that he 25 
never was absent from a play in several years. 

This constant attendance naturally procured him the 

found his solicitations fruitless, and his necessities every day 
more pressing. In this distress he wrote a tragedy, and offered 
it to the players, by whom it was rejected. Thus were his 
last hopes defeated, and he had no other prospect than of the 
most deplorable poverty. But Mr. Wilks thought his perform- 
ance, though not perfect, at least worthy of some reward, and 
therefore offered him a benefit. This favor he improved with 
so much diligence, that the house afforded him a considerable 
sum, with which he went to Leyden, applied himself to the 
study of physic, and prosecuted his design with so much 
diligence and success, that, when Dr. Boerhaave was desired by 
the Czarina to recommend proper persons to introduce into 
Russia the practice and study of physic, Dr. Smith was one of 
those whom he selected. He had a considerable pension settled 
on him at his arrival, and was one of the chief physicians at 
the Russian court. 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 227 

acquaintance of the players, and among others, of Mrs. 
Oldfield, who was so much pleased with his conversation, 
and touched with his misfortunes, that she allowed him 
a settled pension of fifty pounds a year, which was 
5 during her life regularly paid. 

That this act of generosity may receive its due praise, 
and that the good actions of Mrs. Oldfield may not be 
sullied by her general character, it is proper to mention 
what Mr. Savage often declared in the strongest terms, 

10 that he never saw her alone, or in any other place than 
behind the scenes. 

At her death he endeavored to show his gratitude in 
the most decent manner, by wearing mourning as for 
a mother; but did not celebrate her in elegies, because he 

15 knew that too great profusion of praise would only 
have revived those faults which his natural equity did 
" not allow him to think less, because they were com- 
mitted by one who favored him; but of which, though 
his virtue would not endeavor to palliate them, his grati- 

20tude would not suffer him to prolong the memory, or 
diffuse the censure. 

In his Wanderer, he has indeed taken an opportunity 
of mentioning her; but celebrates her not for her virtue, 
but her beauty, an excellence which none ever denied 

25 her ; this is the only encomium with which he has re- 
warded her liberality, and perhaps he has even in this 
been too lavish of his praise. He seems to have thought, 
that never to mention his benefactress would have an 
appearance of ingratitude, though to have dedicated any 

30 particular performance to her memory would have only 
betrayed an officious partiality, that, without exalting 
her character, would have depressed his own. 

He had sometimes, by the kindness of Mr. Wilks, the 
advantage of a benefit, on which occasions he often re- 

35ceived uncommon marks of regard and compassion; 
and was once told by the Duke of Dorset, that it was 
just to consider him as an injured nobleman, and that 



228 SELECTIONS FEOM JOHNSON 

in his opinion the nobility ought to think themselves 
obliged, without solicitation, to take every opportunity 
of supporting him by their countenance and patronage. 
But he had generally the mortification to hear that the 
whole interest of his mother was employed to frustrate 5 
his applications, and that she never left any expedient 
untried, by which he might be cut off from the pos- 
sibility of supporting life. The same disposition she 
endeavored to diffuse among all those over whom nature 
or fortune gave her any influence, and indeed succeeded 10 
too well in her design; but could not always propagate 
her effrontery with her cruelty; for some of those 
whom she incited against him were ashamed of their 
own conduct, and boasted of that relief which they 
never gave him. 15 

In this censure I do not indiscriminately involve all 
his relations; for he has mentioned with gratitude the 
humanity of one lady whose name I am now unable 
to recollect, and to whom therefore I cannot pay the 
praises which she deserves for having acted well in 20 
opposition to influence, precept, and example. 

The punishment which our laws inflict upon those 
parents who murder their infants is well known, nor 
has its justice ever been contested; but if they deserve 
death who destroy a child in its birth, what pains can 25 
be severe enough for her who forbears to destroy him 
only to inflict sharper miseries upon him; who prolongs 
his life only to make him miserable; and who exposes 
him, without care and without pity, to the malice of 
oppression, the caprices of chance, and the temptations 30 
of poverty; who rejoices to see him overwhelmed with 
calamities; and, when his own industry, or the charity 
of others, has enabled him to rise for a short time above 
his miseries, plunges him again into his former distress? 

The kindness of his friends not affording him any 35 
constant supply, and the prospect of improving his 
fortune by enlarging his acquaintance, necessarily lead- 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 229 

ing him to places of expense, he found it necessary * 
to endeavor once more at dramatic poetry, for which 
he was now better qualified by a more extensive know- 
ledge and longer observation. But having been unsuc- 
5cessful in comedy, though rather for want of oppor- 
tunities than genius, he resolved now to try whether 
he should not be more fortunate in exhibiting a tragedy. 
The story which he chose for the subject, was that 
of Sir Thomas Overbury, a story well adapted to the 

10 stage, though perhaps not far enough removed from the 
present age to admit properly the fictions necessary to 
complete the plan ; for the mind, which naturally loves 
truth, is always most offended with the violation cf 
those truths of which we are most certain; and we of 

15 course conceive those facts most certain which approach 
nearest to our own time. 

Out of this story he formed a tragedy, which, if the 
circumstances in which he wrote it be considered, will 
afford at once an uncommon proof of strength of genius, 

20 and evenness of mind, of a serenity not to be ruffled, and 
an imagination not to be suppressed. 

During a considerable part of the time in which he 
was employed upon this performance, he was without 
lodging, and often without meat; nor had he any other 

25 conveniences for study than the fields or the street 
allowed him; there he used to walk and form his 
speeches, and afterwards step into a shop, beg for a 
few moments the use of the pen and ink, and write 
down what he had composed upon paper which he had 

30 picked up by accident. 

If the performance of a writer thus distressed is 
not perfect., its faults ought surely to be imputed to 
a cause very different from want of genius, and must 
rather excite pity than provoke censure. 

35 But when under these discouragements the tragedy 
was finished, there yet remained the labor of introducing 
1 In 1724. 



230 SELECTIONS FBOM JOHNSON 

it on the stage, an undertaking which, to an ingenuous 
mind, was in a very high degree vexatious and disgust- 
ing; for, having little interest or reputation, he was 
obliged to submit himself wholly to the players, and 
admit, with whatever reluctance, the emendations of 5 
Mr. Gibber, which he always considered as the disgrace 
of his performance. 

He had indeed in Mr. Hill another critic of a very 
different class, from whose friendship he received great 
assistance on many occasions, and whom he never men- 10 
tioned but with the utmost tenderness and regard. He 
had been for some time distinguished by him with 
very particular kindness, and on this occasion it was 
natural to apply to him as an author of an established 
character. He therefore sent this tragedy to him, with 15 
a short copy of verses, 1 in which he desired his correc- 
tion. Mr. Hill, whose humanity and politeness are gen- 
erally known, readily complied with his request ; but 
as he is remarkable for singularity of sentiment, and 
bold experiments in language, Mr. Savage did not think 20 
his play much improved by his innovation, and had 
even at that time the courage to reject several passages 
which he could not approve; and, what is still more 
laudable, Mr. Hill had the generosity not to resent 
the neglect of his alterations, but wrote the prologue 25 
and epilogue, in which he touches on the circumstances 
of the author with great tenderness. 

After all these obstructions and compliances, he was 
only able to bring his play upon the stage in the sum- 
mer, when the chief actors had retired, and the rest 30 
were in possession of the house for their own advantage. 
Among these, Savage was admitted to play the part 
of Sir Thomas Overbury, by which he gained no 
great reputation, the theatre being a province for which 
nature seemed not to have designed him ; for neither 35 
his voice, look, nor gesture, were such as are expected 
1 Printed in the late Collection of his Poems. 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 231 

on the stage; and he was so much ashamed of having 
been reduced to appear as a player, that he always 
blotted out his name from the list, when a copy of 
his tragedy was to be shown to his friends. 
5 In the publication of his performance he was more 
successful, for the rays of genius that glimmered in it, 
that glimmered through all the mists which poverty 
and Gibber had been able to spread over it, procured 
him the notice and esteem of many persons eminent for 

10 their rank, their virtue, and their wit. 

Of this play, acted, printed, and dedicated, the ac- 
cumulated profits arose to an hundred pounds, which 
he thought at that time a very large sum, having been 
never master of so much before. 

15 In the Dedication, 1 for which he received ten guineas, 
there is nothing remarkable. The Preface contains a 
very liberal encomium on the blooming excellencies of 
Mr. Theophilus Gibber, which Mr. Savage could not in 
the latter part of his life see his friends about to read 

20 without snatching the play out of their hands. The 
generosity of Mr. Hill did not end on this occasion; 
for afterwards, when Mr. Savage's necessities returned, 
he encouraged a subscription to a Miscellany of Poems 
in a very extraordinary manner, by publishing his story 

25 in The Plain Dealer, 2 with some affecting lines, which 
he asserts to have been written by Mr. Savage upon the 
treatment received by him from his mother, but of which 
he was himself the author, as Mr. Savage afterwards 
declared. These lines, and the paper in which they 

30 were inserted, had a very powerful effect upon all but 
his mother, whom, by making her cruelty more public, 
they only hardened in her aversion. 

Mr. Hill not only promoted the subscription to the 

1 To Herbert Tryst, Esq. of Herefordshire. 

2 The Plain Dealer was a periodical paper, written by Mr. 
Hill and Mr. Bond, whom Mr. Savage called the two contending 
powers of light and darkness. They wrote by turns each six 
essays : and the character of the work was observed regularly 
to rise in Mr. Hill's weeks, and fall in Mr. Bond's. 



232 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

Miscellany , but furnished likewise the greatest part of 
the poems of which it is composed, and particularly 
The Happy Man, which he published as a specimen. 

The subscriptions of those whom these papers should 
influence to patronise merit in distress, without any. other 5 
solicitation, were directed to be left at Button's coffee- 
house; and Mr. Savage going thither a few days after- 
wards, without expectation of any effect from his pro- 
posal, found to his surprise seventy guineas/ which had 
been sent him in consequence of the compassion excited 10 
by Mr. HilPs pathetic representation. 

To this Miscellany he wrote a preface, in which he 
gives an account of his mother's cruelty in a very un- 
common strain of humor, and with a gaiety of imagina- 
tion which the success of his subscription probably 15 
produced. 

The Dedication is addressed to the lady Mary Wort- 
ley Montague, whom he flatters without reserve, and 
to confess the truth, vith very little art. 2 The same 
observation may be extended to all his dedications : his 20 
compliments are constrained and violent, heaped to- 
gether without the grace of order, or the decency of 

1 The names of those who so generously contributed to his 
relief having been mentioned in a former account, ought not to 
be omitted here. They were the Duchess of Cleveland, Lady 
Cheyney, Lady Castlemain, Lady Gower, Lady Lechmere, the 
Duchess-dowager and Duchess of Rutland. Lady Strafford, the 
Countess-Dowager of Warwick, Mrs. Mary Floyer, Mrs. Sofuel 
Noel, Duke of Rutland, Lord Gainsborough, Lord Milsington, Mr. 
John Savage. 

2 This the following extract from it will prove : 

' Since our country has been honoured with the glory of your 
wit, as elevated and immortal as your soul, it no longer re- 
mains a doubt whether your sex have strength of mind in 
proportion to their sweetness. There is something in your 
verses as distinguished as your air. — They are as strong as 
truth, as deep as reason, as clear as innocence, and as smooth as 
beauty. — They contain a nameless and peculiar mixture of force 
and grace, which is at once so movingly serene, and so ma- 
jestically lovely, that it is too amiable to appear any where but 
in your eyes and in your writings. 

4 As fortune is not more my enemy than I am the enemy of 
flattery, I know not how I can forbear this application to your 
Ladyship, because there is scarce a possibility that I should say 
more than I believe, when I am speaking of your excellence.' 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 233 

introduction; lie seems to have written his panegyrics 
for the perusal only of his patrons, and to have imagined 
that he had no other task than to pamper them with 
praises however gross, and that flattery would make 
5 its way to the heart, without the assistance of elegance 
or invention. 

Soon afterwards the death of the king furnished a 
general subject for a poetical contest, in which Mr. 
Savage engaged, and is allowed to have carried the 

10 prize of honor from his competitors : but I know not 
whether he gained by his performance any other ad- 
vantage than the increase of his reputation; though it 
must certainly have been with farther views that he 
prevailed upon himself to attempt a species of writing, 

15 of which all the topics had been long before exhausted, 
and which was made at once difficult by the multi- 
tudes that had failed in it, and those that had suc- 
ceeded. 

He was now advancing in reputation, and though 

20 frequently involved in very distressful perplexities, ap- 
peared however to be gaining upon mankind, when both 
his fame and his life were endangered by an event of 
which it is not yet determined whether it ought to be 
mentioned as a crime or a calamity. 

So On the 20th of November, 1727, Mr. Savage came 
from Richmond, where he then lodged, that he might 
pursue his studies with less interruption, with an intent 
to discharge another lodging which he had in West- 
minster; and accidentally meeting two gentlemen his 

30 acquaintances, whose names were Merchant and Gregory, 
he went in with them to a neighboring coffee-house, and 
sat drinking till it was late, it being in no time of 
Mr. Savage's life any part of his character to be the 
first of the company that desired to separate. He would 

35 willingly have gone to bed in the same house ; but there 
was not room for the whole company, and therefore 
they agreed to ramble about the streets, and divert them- 



234 SELECTIONS FEOM JOHNSON 

selves with such amusements as should offer themselves 
till morning. 

In this walk they happened unluckily to discover a 
light in Robinson's coffee-house, near Charing-cross, and 
therefore went in. Merchant with some rudeness de- 5 
manded a room, and was told that there was a good 
fire in the next parlor, which the company were about 
to leave, being then paying their reckoning. Merchant, 
not satisfied with this answer, rushed into the room, 
and was followed by his companions. He then petu- 10 
lantly placed himself between the company and the 
fire, and soon after kicked down the table. This pro- 
duced a quarrel, swords w 7 ere drawn on both sides, and 
one Mr. James Sinclair was killed. Savage, having 
wounded likewise a maid that held him, forced his w T ay 15 
with Merchant out of the house; but being intimidated 
and confused, without resolution either to fly or stay, 
they were taken in a back court by one of the company, 
and some soldiers, whom he had called to his assistance. 

Being secured and guarded that night, they were in 20 
the morning carried before three justices, who com- 
mitted them to the Gatehouse, from whence, upon the 
death of Mr. Sinclair, which happened the same day, 
they were removed in the night to Newgate, w 7 here they 
were however treated with some distinction, exempted 25 
from the ignominy of chains, and confined, not among 
the common criminals, but in the press-yard. 

When the clay of trial came, the court was crowded 
in a very unusual manner; and the public appeared to 
interest, itself as in a cause of general concern. The 30 
witnesses against Mr. Savage and his friends were, 
the woman who kept the house, which was a house of 
ill fame, and her maid, the men who were in the room 
with Mr. Sinclair, and a woman of the town, who had 
been drinking with them, and with whom one of them 35 
had been seen in bed. They swore in general, that 
Merchant gave the provocation, which Savage and Gregory 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 235 

drew their swords to justify; that Savage drew first, and 
that he stabbed Sinclair when he was not in a posture 
of defense, or while Gregory commanded his sword; 
that after he had given the thrust he turned pale, and 

5 would have retired, but that the maid clung round him, 
and one of the company endeavored to detain him, from 
whom he broke, by cutting the maid on the head, but 
was afterwards taken in a court. 

There was some difference in their depositions; one 

10 did not see Savage give the wound, another saw it 
given when Sinclair held his point towards the ground; 
and the woman of the town asserted, that she did not 
see Sinclair's sword at all: this difference however was 
very far from amounting to inconsistency; but it was 

15 sufficient to show that the hurry of the dispute was 
such, that it was not easy to discover the truth with 
relation to particular circumstances, and that therefore 
some deductions were to be made from the credibility of 
the testimonies. 

20 Sinclair had declared several times before his death, 
that he received his wound from Savage; nor did Savage 
at his trial deny the fact, but endeavored partly to 
extenuate it, by urging the suddenness of the whole 
action, and the impossibility of any ill design, or pre- 

25 meditated malice ; and partly to justify it by the neces- 
sity of self-defense, and the hazard of his own life, if 
he had lost that opportunity of giving the thrust: he 
observed, that neither reason nor law obliged a man 
to wait for the blow which was threatened, and which, 

30 if he should suffer it, he might never be able to return; 
that it was always allowable to prevent an assault, and 
to preserve life by taking away that of the adversary 
by whom it was endangered. 

With regard to the violence with which he endeavored 

35 to escape, he declared, that it was not his design to fly 
from justice, or decline a trial, but to avoid the ex- 
penses and severities of a prison; and that he 



236 SELECTIONS FEOM JOHNSON 

intended to have appeared at the bar without 
compulsion. 

This defense, which took up more than an hour, was 
heard by the multitude that thronged the court with 
the most attentive and respectful silence : those who 5 
thought he ought not to be acquitted, owned that ap- 
plause could not be refused him; and those who before 
pitied his misfortunes, now reverenced his abilities. 

The witnesses which appeared against him were proved 
to be persons of characters which did not entitle them 10 
to much credit : a common strumpet, a woman by whom 
strumpets were entertained, and a man by whom they 
were supported; and the character of Savage was by 
several persons of distinction asserted to be that of a 
modest inoffensive man, not inclined to broils or to 15 
insolence, and who had, to that time, been only known 
for his misfortunes and his wit. 

Had his audience been his judges, he had undoubtedly 
been acquitted ; but Sir Francis Page, who was then upon 
the bench, treated him with his usual insolence and 20 
severity, and when he had summed up the evidence, en- 
deavored to exasperate the jury, as Mr. Savage used to 
relate it, with this eloquent harangue: 

1 Gentlemen of the jury, you are to consider that 
Mr. Savage is a very great man, a much greater man 25 
than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; that he wears 
very fine clothes, much finer clothes than you or I, 
gentlemen of the jury; that he has abundance of money 
in his pocket, much more money than you or I, gentle- 
men of the jury; but, gentlemen of the jury, is it not 30 
a very hard case, gentlemen of the jury, that Mr. 
Savage should therefore kill you or me, gentlemen of 
the jury? ? 

Mr. Savage hearing his defense thus misrepresented, 
and the men who were to decide his fate incited against 35 
him by invidious comparisons, resolutely asserted, that 
his cause was not candidly explained, and began to 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 237 

recapitulate what he had before said with regard to 
his condition, and the necessity of endeavoring to escape 
the expenses of imprisonment; but the judge having 
ordered him to be silent, and repeated his orders with- 
5 out effect, commanded that he should be taken from 
the bar by force. 

The jury then heard the opinion of the judge, that 
good characters were of no weight against positive 
evidence, though they might turn the scale where it was 

10 doubtful ; and that though, when two men attack each 
other, the death of either is only manslaughter; but 
where one is the aggressor, as in the case before them, 
and, in pursuance of his first attack, kills the other, 
the law supposes the action, however sudden, to be 

15 malicious. They then deliberated upon their verdict, and 
determined that Mr. Savage and Mr. Gregory were 
guilty of murder; and Mr. Merchant, who had no 
sword, only of manslaughter. 

Thus er.ded this memorable trial, which lasted eight 

20 hours. Mr. Savage and Mr. Gregory were conducted 
back to prison, where they were more closely confined, 
and loaded with irons of fifty pounds weight ; four days 
afterwards they were sent back to the court to receive 
sentence; on which occasion Mr. Savage made, as far 

25 as it could be retained in memory, the following speech : 

' It is now, my lord, too late to offer any thing by 

way of defense or vindication ; nor can we expect from 

your lordships, in this court, but the sentence which 

the law requires you, as judges, to pronounce against 

30 men of our calamitous condition. — But we are also per- 
suaded, that as mere men, and out of this seat of 
rigorous justice, you are susceptive of the tender pas- 
sions, and too humane not to commiserate the unhappy 
situation of those whom the law sometimes perhaps — - 

85 exacts — from you to pronounce upon. No doubt, you 
distinguish between offenses which arise out of pre- 
meditation, and a disposition habituated to vice or im- 



238 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

morality, and transgressions, which are the unhappy 
and unforeseen effects of a casual absence of reason, and 
sudden impulse of passion: we therefore hope you will 
contribute all you can to an extension of that mercy 
which the gentlemen of the jury have been pleased to 5 
show Mr. Merchant, who (allowing facts as sworn 
against us by the evidence) has led us into this our 
calamity. I hope this will not be construed as if we 
meant to reflect upon that gentleman, or remove any 
thing from us upon him, or that we repine the more 10 
at our fate, because he has no participation of it. No, 
my lord! For my part I declare nothing could more 
soften my grief, than to be without any companion in 
so great a misfortune/ x 

Mr. Savage had now no hopes of life, but from the 15 
mercy of the crown, which was very earnestly solicited 
by his friends, and which, with whatever difficulty the 
story may obtain belief, was obstructed only by his 
mother. 

To prejudice the queen against him, she made use 20 
of an incident, which was omitted in the order of time, 
that it might be mentioned together with the purpose 
which it was made to serve. Mr. Savage, when he had 
discovered his birth, had an incessant desire to speak 
to his mother, who always avoided him in public, and 25 
refused him admission into her house. One evening 
walking, as it was his custom, in the street that she 
inhabited, he saw the door of her house by accident 
open; he entered it, and, finding no person in the pas- 
sage to hinder him, went up stairs to salute her. She 30. 
discovered him before he could enter her chamber, 
alarmed the family with the most distressful outcries, 
and, when she had by her screams gathered them about 
her, ordered them to drive out of the house that villain, 
who had forced himself in upon her, and endeavored 35 
to murder her. Savage, who had attempted with the . 
* Mr. Savage's Life, 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 239 

most submissive tenderness to soften her rage, hearing 
her utter so detestable an accusation, thought it prudent 
to retire; and, I believe, never attempted afterwards to 
speak to her. 
5 But, shocked as he was with her falsehood and her 
cruelty, he imagined that she intended no other use 
of her lie, than to set herself free from his embraces 
and solicitations, and was very far from suspecting that 
she would treasure it in her memory as an instrument 

10 of future wickedness, or that she would endeavor for 
this fictitious assault to deprive him of his life. 

But when the queen was solicited for his pardon, and 
informed of the severe treatment which he had suffered 
from his judge, she answered, that, however unjustifiable 

15 might be the manner of his trial, or whatever extenua- 
tion the action for which he was condemned might admit, 
she could not think that man a proper object of the 
king's mercy, who had been capable of entering his 
mother's house in the night with an intent to murder 

20 her. 

By whom this atrocious calumny had been transmitted 
to the queen; whether she that invented had the front 
to relate it; whether she found any one weak enough 
to credit it, or corrupt enough to concur with her in 

25 her hateful design, I know not : but methods had been 
taken to persuade the queen so strongly of the truth 
of it, that she for a long time refused to hear any of 
those who petitioned for his life. 

Thus had Savage perished by the evidence of a bawd, 

30 a strumpet, and his mother, had not justice and com- 
passion procured him an advocate of rank too great 
to be rejected unheard, and of virtue too eminent to 
be heard without being believed. His merit and his 
calamities happened to reach the ear of the Countess 

35 of Hertford, who engaged in his support with all the 
tenderness that is excited by pity, and all the zeal 
which is kindled by generosity; and, demanding an 



240 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

audience of the queen, laid before her the whole series 
of his mother's cruelty, exposed the improbability of 
an accusation by which he was charged with an intent 
to commit a murder that could produce no advantage, 
and soon convinced her how little his former conduct 5 1 
could deserve to be mentioned as a reason for extraor- 
dinary severity. 

The interposition of this lady was so successful, that 
he was soon after admitted to bail, and on the 9th of 
March, 1728, pleaded the king's pardon. 10 1 

It is natural to inquire upon what motives his mother 
could persecute him in a manner so outrageous and im- 
placable; for what reason she could employ all the 
arts of malice, and all the snares of calumny, to take 
away the life of her own son, of a son who never in- 15 
jured her, who was never supported by her expense, 
nor obstructed any prospect of pleasure or advantage : 
why she should endeavor to destroy him by a lie — a 
lie which could not gain credit, but must vanish of 
itself at the first moment of examination, and of which 20 
only this can be said to make it probable, that it may 
be observed from her conduct, that the most execrable 
crimes are sometimes committed without apparent temp- 
tation. 

This mother is still alive, and may perhaps even yet, 25 
though her malice was so often defeated, enjoy the 
pleasure of reflecting, that the life, which she often 
endeavored to destroy, was at least shortened by her 
maternal offices ; that though ■ she could not transport 
her son to the plantations, bury him in the shop of 30 
a mechanic, or hasten the hand of the public execu- 
tioner, she has yet had the satisfaction of embittering 
all his hours, and forcing him into exigencies that hur- 
ried on his death. 

It is by no means necessary to aggravate the enormity 35 
of this woman's conduct, by placing it in opposition to 
that of the Countess of Hertford; no one can fail to 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 241 

observe how touch more amiable it is to relieve, than 
to oppress, and to rescue innocence from destruction, 
than to destroy without an injury. 

Mr. Savage, during his imprisonment, his trial, and 
5 the time in which he lay under sentence of death, 
behaved with great firmness and equality of mind, and 
confirmed by his fortitude the esteem of those who 
before admired him for his abilities. The peculiar 
circumstances of his life were made more generally known 

10 by a short account, 1 which was then published, and of 
which several thousands were in a few weeks dispersed 
over the nation; and the compassion of mankind oper- 
ated so powerfully in his favor, that he was enabled, 
by frequent presents, not only to support himself, but 

15 to assist Mr. Gregory in prison ; and, when he was 
pardoned and released, he found the number of his 
friends not lessened. 

The nature of the act for which he had been tried 
was in itself doubtful; of the evidences which appeared 

20 against him, the character of the man was not unexcep- 
tionable, that of the woman notoriously infamous; she, 
whose testimony chiefly influenced the jury to condemn 
him, afterwards retracted her assertions. He always 
himself denied that he was drunk, as had been generally 

25 reported. Mr. Gregory, who is now (1744) collector 
of Antigua, is said to declare him far less criminal 
than he was imagined, even b}^ some who favored him; 
and Page himself afterwards confessed, that he had 
treated him with uncommon rigor. When all these 

30 particulars are rated together, perhaps the memory of 
Savage may not be much sullied by his trial. 

Some time after he had obtained his liberty, he met 
in the street the woman that had sworn with so much 
malignity against him. She informed him that she was 

35 in distress, and, with a degree of confidence not easily 
attainable, desired him to relieve her. He, instead of 
1 Written by Mr. Beckingham and another gentleman. 



242 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

insulting her misery, and taking pleasure in the calami- 
ties of one who had brought his life into danger re- 
proved her gently for her perjury; and changing the 
only guinea that he had, divided it equally between her 
and himself. 5 

This is an action which in some ages would have 
made a saint, and perhaps in others a hero, and which, 
without any hyperbolical encomiums, must be allowed 
to be an instance of uncommon generosity, an act of 
complicated virtue ; by which he at once relieved the 10 
poor, corrected the vicious, and forgave an enemy; by 
which he at once remitted the strongest provocations, 
and exercised the most ardent charity. 

Compassion was indeed the distinguishing quality of 
Savage ; he never appeared inclined to take advantage 15 
of weakness, to attack the defenseless, or to press upon 
the falling: whoever was distressed was certain at least 
of his good wishes ; and when he could give no assistance 
to extricate them from misfortunes, he endeavored to 
soothe them by sympathy and tenderness. 20 

But when his heart was not softened by the sight of 
misery, he was sometimes obstinate in his resentment, 
and did not quickly lose the remembrance of an injury. 
He always continued to speak with anger of the in- 
solence and partiality of Page, and a short time before 25 
his death revenged it by a satire. 1 

It is natural to inquire in what terms Mr. Savage 
spoke of this fatal action, when the danger was over, 
and he was under no necessity of using any art to 
set his conduct in the fairest light. He was not willing 30 
to dwell upon it; and, if he transiently mentioned it, 
appeared neither to consider himself as a murderer, 
nor as a man wholly free from the guilt of blood. 2 
How much and how long he regretted it, appeared in 
a poem which he published many years afterwards. On 35 

1 Printed in the late Collection. 

2 In one of his letters he styled it ' a fatal quarrel, but too 
well known/ 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 243 

occasion of a copy of -erses, in which the failings 
of good men were recounted, and in which the author 
had endeavored to illustrate his position, that ' the best 
may sometimes deviate from virtue/ by an instance 
5 of murder committed by Savage in the heat of wine, 
Savage remarked, that it was no very just repre- 
sentation of a good man, to suppose him liable 
to drunkenness, and disposed in his riots to cut 
throats. 

10 He was now indeed at liberty, but was, as before, 
without any other support than accidental favors and 
uncertain patronage afforded him; sources by which he 
was sometimes very liberally supplied, and which at 
other times were suddenly stopped; so that he spent his 

15 life between want and plenty ; or, what was yet worse, 
between beggary and extravagance; for as whatever 
he received was the gift of chance, which might as well 
favor him at one time as another, he was tempted to 
squander what he had, because he always hoped to be 

20 immediately supplied. 

Another cause of his profusion was the absurd kind- 
ness of his friends, who at once rewarded and enjoyed 
his abilities, by treating him at taverns, and habituating 
him to pleasures which he could not afford to enjoy, 

25 and which he was not able to deny himself, though he 
purchased the luxury of a single night by the anguish 
of cold and hunger for a week. 

The experience of these inconveniences determined 
him to endeavor after some settled income, which, having 

30 long found submission and entreaties fruitless, he at- 
tempted to extort from his mother by rougher methods. 
He had now, as he acknowledged, lost that tenderness 
for her, which the whole series of her cruelty had not 
been able wholly to repress, till he found, by the efforts 

35 which she made for his destruction, that she was not 
content with refusing to assist him, and being neutral 
in his struggles with poverty, but was as ready to snatch 



244 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

every opportunity of adding to his misfortunes; and 
that she was to be considered as an enemy implacably 
malicious, whom nothing but his blood could satisfy. 
He therefore threatened to harass her with lampoons, 
and to publish a copious narrative of her conduct, un- 5 
less she consented to purchase an exemption from in- 
famy by allowing him a pension. 

This expedient proved successful. Whether shame still 
survived, though virtue was extinct, or w T hether her 
relations had more delicacy than herself, and imagined 10 
that some of the darts which satire might point at her 
would glance upon them; Lord Tyrconnel, whatever 
were his motives, upon his promise to lay aside his 
design of exposing the cruelty of his mother, received 
him into his family, treated him as his equal, and en- 15 
gaged to allow him a pension of two hundred pounds 
a year. 

This was the golden part of Mr. Savage's life; and 
for some time he had no reason to complain of fortune; 
his appearance was splendid, his expenses large, and 20 
his acquaintance extensive. He was courted by all who 
endeavored to be thought men of genius, and caressed 
by all who valued themselves upon a refined taste. To 
admire Mr. Savage was a proof of discernment; and 
to be acquainted with him was a title of poetical reputa- 25 
tion. His presence was sufficient to make any place of 
public entertainment popular; and his approbation and 
example constituted the fashion. So powerful is genius, 
when it is invested with the glitter of affluence! Men 
willingly pay to fortune that regard which they owe 30 
to merit, and are pleased when they have an opportunity 
at once of gratifying their vanity, and practising their 
duty. 

This interval of prosperity furnished him w T ith oppor- 
tunities of enlarging his knowledge of human nature, 35 
by contemplating life from its highest gradations to 
its lowest; and, had he afterwards applied to dramatic 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 245 

poetry, lie would perhaps not have had many superiors; 
for, as he never suffered any scene to pass before his 
eyes without notice, he had treasured in his mind all 
the different combinations of passions, and the innumera- 
5 ble mixtures of vice and virtue, which distinguish one 
character from another; and, as his conception was 
strong, his expressions were clear, he easily received 
impressions from objects, and very forcibly transmitted 
them to others. 

10 Of his exact observations on human life he has left a 
proof, which would do honor to the greatest names, 
in a small pamphlet, called The Author to be let, x where 
he introduces Iscariot Hackney, a prostitute scribbler, 
giving an account of his birth, his education, his dis- 

15 position and morals, habits of life, and maxims of con- 
duct. In the introduction are related many secret his- 
tories of the petty writers of that time, but sometimes 
mixed with ungenerous reflections on their birth, their 
circumstances, or those of their relations; nor can it 

20 be denied, that some passages are such as Iscariot Hack- 
ney might himself have produced. 

He was accused likewise of living in an appearance 
of friendship with some whom he satirised, and of mak- 
ing use of the confidence which he gained by a seeming 

25 kindness, to discover failings and expose them: it must 
be confessed, that Mr. Savage's esteem was no very cer- 
tain possession, and that he would lampoon at one time 
those whom he had praised at another. 

It may. be alleged that the same man may change his 

30 principles ; and that he who was once deservedly com- 
mended may be afterwards satirised with equal justice; 
or that the poet was dazzled with the appearance of 
virtue, and found the man whom he had celebrated, 
when he had an opportunity of examining him more 

35 narrowly, unworthy of the panegyric which he had too 
hastily bestowed; and that as a false satire ought to be 
1 Printed in his Works, vol. ii, p. 231. 



246 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

recanted, for the sake of him whose reputation may be 
injured, false praise ought likewise to be obviated, lest 
the distinction between vice and virtue should be lost, 
lest a bad man should be trusted upon the credit of his 
encomiast, or lest others should endeavor to obtain the 5 
like praises by the same means. 

But though these excuses may be often plausible, and 
sometimes just, they are very seldom satisfactory to 
mankind; and the writer who is not constant to his 
subject, quickly sinks into contempt, his satire loses 10 
its force, and his panegyric its value; and he is only 
considered at one time as a flatterer, and as a calum- 
niator at another. 

To avoid these imputations, it is only necessary to 
follow the rules of virtue, and to preserve an unvaried 15 
regard to truth. For though it is undoubtedly possible 
that a man, however cautious, may be sometimes de- 
ceived by an artful appearance of virtue, or by false 
evidences of guilt, such errors will not be frequent; and 
it will be allowed, that the name of an author would 20 
never have been made contemptible, had no man ever 
said what he did not think, or misled others but when 
he was himself deceived. 

The Author to be let was first published in a single 
pamphlet, and afterwards inserted in a collection of 25 
pieces relating to The Dunciad, which were addressed 
by Mr. Savage to the Earl of Middlesex, in a dedication * 
which he was prevailed upon to sign, though he did not 
write it, and in which there are some positions that 
the true author would perhaps not have published under 30 
his own name, and on which Mr. Savage afterwards 
reflected with no great satisfaction : the enumeration of 
the bad effects of ' the uncontrolled freedom of the press/ 
and the assertion that the ' liberties taken by the writers 
of journals with their superiors were exorbitant and 35 
unjustifiable/ yery ill became men, who have themselves 

i See bis Works, vol. ii, p. 233. . 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 247 

not always shown the exactest regard to the laws of 
subordination in their writings, and who have often 
satirised those that at least thought themselves their 
superiors, as they were eminent for their hereditary 
5 rank, and employed in the highest offices of the king- 
dom. But this is only an instance of that partiality 
which almost every man indulges with regard to him- 
self: the liberty of the press is a blessing when we 
are inclined to write against others, and a calamity 

10 when we find ourselves overborne by the multitude of 
our assailants; as the power of the crown is always 
thought too great by those who suffer by its influence, 
and too little by those in whose favor it is exerted; and 
a standing army is generally accounted necessary by 

15 those who command, and dangerous and oppressive by 
those who support it. 

Mr. Savage was likewise very far from believing 
that the letters annexed to each species of bad poets 
in The Bathos were, as he was directed to assert, i set 

20 down at random ' ; for when he was charged by one of 
his friends with putting his name to such an improba- 
bility, he had no other answer to make than that i he 
did not think of it ' ; and his friend had too much tender- 
ness to reply, that next to the crime of writing con- 

25 trary to what he thought, was that of writing without 
thinking. 

After having remarked what is false in his dedica- 
tion, it is proper that I observe the impartiality which 
I recommend, by declaring what Savage asserted; that 

30 the account of the circumstances which attended the 
publication of The Dunciad, however strange and im- 
probable, was exactly true. 

The publication of this piece at this time raised Mr. 
Savage a great number of enemies among those that 

35 were attacked by Mr. Pope, with whom he was con- 
sidered as a kind of confederate, and w T hom he was 
suspected of supplying with private intelligence and 



248 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

secret incidents: so that the ignominy of an informer was 
added to the terror' of a satirist, 

That he was not altogether free from literary hy- 
pocrisy, and that he sometimes spoke one thing and 
wrote another, cannot be denied ; because he him- 5 
self confessed, that, when he lived in great famil- 
iarity with Dennis, he wrote an epigram 1 against 
him. 

Mr. Savage, however, set all the malice of all the 
pigmy writers at defiance, and thought the friendship 10 
of Mr. Pope cheaply purchased by being exposed to 
their censure and their hatred; nor had he any reason 
to repent of the preference, for he found Mr. Pope a 
steady and unalienable friend almost to the end of his 
life. 15 

About this time, notwithstanding his avowed neu- 
trality with regard to party, he published a panegyric 
on Sir Robert Walpole, for which he was rewarded 
by him with twenty guineas, a sum not very large, if 
either the excellence of the performance, or the affluence 20 
of the patron, be considered: but greater than he after- 
wards obtained from a person of yet higher rank, and 
more desirous in appearance of being distinguished as 
a patron of literature. 

As he was very far from approving the conduct 25 
of Sir Robert Walpole, and in conversation mentioned 
him sometimes with acrimony, and generally with con- 
tempt; as he was one of those who w T ere always zealous 
in their assertions of the justice of the late opposition, 
jealous of the rights of the people, and alarmed by 30 
the long-continued triumph of the court; it was natural 

1 This epigram was, I believe, never published. 

Should Dennis publish you had stabb'd your brother, 
Lampoon'd your monarch, or debauch'd your mother ; 
Say, what revenge on Dennis can be had, 
Too dull for laughter, for reply too mad? 
On one so poor you cannot take the law, 
On one so old your sword you scorn to draw, 
"Uncag'd then, let the harmless monster rage, 
Secure in dullness, madness, want, and age. 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 249 

to ask him what could induce him to employ his poetry 
in praise of that man, who was, in his opinion, an 
enemy to liberty, and an oppressor of his country? 
He alleged, that he was then dependant upon the lord 
5 Tyrconnel, who was an implicit follower of the 
ministry, and that, being enjoined by him, not with- 
out menaces, to write in praise of his leader, he had 
not resolution sufficient to sacrifice the pleasure of af- 
fluence to that of integrity. 

10 On this, and on many other occasions, he was ready 
to lament the misery of living at the tables of 
other men, which was his fate from the beginning 
to the end of his life; for I know not whether 
he ever had, for three months together, a settled 

15 habitation, in which he could claim a right of resi- 
dence. 

To this unhappy state it is just to impute much of 
the inconstancy of his conduct; for though a readiness 
to comply with the inclination of others was no part 

20 of his natural character, yet he was sometimes obliged 
to relax his obstinacy, and submit his own judgment, 
and even his virtue, to the government of those by 
whom he was supported : so that, if his miseries were 
sometimes the consequences of his faults, he ought not 

25 yet to be wholly excluded from compassion, because 
his faults were very often the effects of his mis- 
fortunes. 

In this gay period x of his life, while he was sur- 
rounded by affluence and pleasure, he published The 

30 Wanderer, a moral poem, of which the design is com- 
prised in these lines : 

I fly all public care, all venal strife. 
To try the still, compar'd with active life ; 
To prove, by these, the sons of men may owe 
35 The fruits of bliss to bursting clouds of woe ; 

That ev'n calamity, by thought refin'd. 
Inspirits and adorns the thinking mind. 

11729. 



250 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

And more distinctly in the following passage: 

By woe, the soul to daring action swells ; 

By woe, in plaintless patience it excels : 

From patience, prudent clear experience springs, 

And traces knowledge through the course of things ! 5 

Thence hope is form'd, thence fortitude, success, 

Renown — whate'er men covet and caress. 

This performance was always considered by himself 
as his masterpiece; and Mr. Pope, when he asked his 
opinion of it, told him, that he read it once over, and 10 
was not displeased with it; that it gave him more pleas- 
ure at the second perusal, and delighted him still more 
at the third. 

It has been generally objected to The Wanderer, that 
the disposition of the parts is irregular; that the design 15 
is obscure and the plan perplexed; that the images, 
however beautiful, succeed each other without order; 
and that the whole performance is not so much a regu- 
lar fabric, as a heap of shining materials thrown to- 
gether by accident, which strikes rather with the solemn 20 
magnificence of a stupendous ruin, than the elegant 
grandeur of a finished pile. 

This criticism is universal, and therefore it is reason- 
able to believe it at least in a great degree just; but Mr. 
Savage was always of a contrary opinion, and thought 25 
his drift could only be missed by negligence or stupidity, 
and that the whole plan was regular, and the parts 
distinct. 

It was never denied to abound with strong representa- 
tions of nature, and just observations upon life ; and 30 
it may easily be observed, that most of his pictures 
have an evident tendency to illustrate his first great 
position, c that good is the consequence of evil/ The 
sun that burns up the mountains, fructifies the vales; 
the deluge that rushes down the broken rocks with 35 
dreadful impetuosity is separated into purling brooks; 
and the rage of the hurricane purifies the air. 

Even in this poem he has not been able to forbear 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 251 

one touch upon the cruelty of his mother, which, though 
remarkably delicate and tender, is a proof how deep 
an impression it had upon his mind. 

This must be at least acknowledged, which ought to 

5 be thought equivalent to many other excellencies, that 

this poem can promote no other purposes than those 

of virtue, and that it is written with a very strong sense 

of the efficacy of religion. 

But my province is rather to give the history of Mr. 

10 Savage's performances than to display their beauties, or 
to obviate the criticisms which they have occasioned; 
and therefore I shall not dwell upon the particular 
passages which deserve applause; I shall neither 
show the excellence of his descriptions, nor ex- 

15patiate on the terrific portrait of suicide, nor 
pohit out the artful touches by which he has dis- 
tinguished the intellectual features of the rebels who 
suffered death in his last canto. It is, however, proper 
to observe, that Mr. Savage always declared the char- 

20 acters wholly fictitious, and without the least allusion 
to any real persons or actions. 

From a poem so diligently labored, and so success- 
fully finished, it might be reasonably expected that he 
should have gained considerable advantage; nor can it, 

25 without some degree of indignation and concern, be told, 
that he sold the copy for ten guineas, of which he 
afterwards returned two, that the two last sheets of 
the work might be reprinted, of which he had in his 
absence intrusted the correction to a friend, who was 

30 too indolent to perform it with accuracy. 

A superstitious regard to the correction of his sheets 
was one of Mr. Savage's peculiarities: he often altered, 
revised, recurred to his first reading or punctuation, and 
again adopted the alteration; he was dubious and ir- 

35 resolute without end, as on a question of the last im- 
portance, and at last was seldom satisfied: the intrusion 
or omission of a comma was sufficient to discompose 



252 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

him, and he would lament an error of a single letter 
as a heavy calamity. In one of his letters relating to 
an impression of some verses, he remarks that he had, 
with regard to the correction of the proof, ' a spell 
upon him ' ; and indeed the anxiety with which he dwelt 5 
upon the minutest and most trifling niceties deserved 
no other name than that of fascination. 

That he sold so valuable a performance for so small 
a price, was not to be imputed either to necessity, by 
which the learned and ingenious are often obliged to 10 
submit to very hard conditions; or to avarice, by which 
the booksellers are frequently incited to oppress that 
genius by which they are supported; but to that in- 
temperate desire of pleasure, and habitual slavery to 
his passions, which involved him in many perplexities, ^ 
He happened at that time to be engaged in the pursuit 
of some trifling gratification, and, being without money 
for the present occasion, sold his poem to the first bid- 
der, and perhaps for the first price that was proposed, 
and would probably have been content with less, if less 20 
had been offered him. 

This poem was addressed to the Lord Tyrconnel, not 
only in the first lines, but in a formal dedication filled 
with the highest strains of panegyric, and the warmest 
professions of gratitude, but by no means remarkable 25 
for delicacy of connection or elegance of style. 

These praises in a short time he found himself in- 
clined to retract, being discarded by the man on whom 
he had bestowed them, and whom he then immediately 
discovered not to have deserved them. Of this quarrel, 30 
which every day made more bitter, Lord Tyrconnel and 
Mr. Savage assigned very different reasons, which might 
perhaps all in reality concur, though they were not all 
convenient to be alleged by either party. Lord Tyr- 
connel affirmed, that it was the constant practice of 35 
Mr. Savage to enter a tavern with any company that . 
proposed it, drink the most expensive wines with great 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 253 

profusion, and when the reckoning was demanded, to 
be without money. If, as it often happened, his com- 
pany were willing to defray his part, the affair ended 
without any ill consequences; but if they were refrac- 
5tory, and expected that the wine should be paid for 
by him that drank it, his method of composition was, 
to take them with him to his own apartment, assume 
the government of the house, and order the butler in 
an imperious manner to set the best wine in the cellar 

10 before his company, who often drank till they forgot 
the respect due to the house in which they were enter- 
tained, indulged themselves in the utmost extravagance 
of merriment, practised the most licentious frolics, and 
committed all the outrages of drunkenness. 

15 Nor was this the only charge which Lord Tyrconnel 
brought against him; having given him a collection of 
valuable books, stamped with his own arms, he had 
the mortification to see them in a short time exposed 
to sale upon the stalls, it being usual with Mr. Savage, 

20 when he wanted a small sum, to take his books to the 
pawnbroker. 

Whoever was acquainted with Mr. Savage easily 
credited both these accusations : for having been obliged, 
from his first entrance into the world, to subsist upon 

25 expedients, affluence was not able to exalt him above 
them; and so much was he delighted with wine and 
conversation, and so long had he been accustomed to 
live by chance, that he would at any time go to the 
tavern without scruple, and trust for the reckoning 

30 to the liberality of his company, and frequently of 
company to whom he was very little known. This con- 
duct indeed very seldom drew upon him those incon- 
veniences that might be feared by any other person; 
for his conversation was so entertaining, and his ad- 

35 dress so pleasing, that few thought the pleasure which 
they received from him dearly purchased, by paying for 
his wine. It was his peculiar happiness, that he scarcely 



254 SELECTIONS FBOM JOHNSON 

ever found a stranger, whom he did not leave a friend; 
but it must likewise be added, that he had not often 
a friend long, without obliging him to become a stranger. 

Mr. Savage, on the other hand, declared that Lord 
Tyreonnel 3 quarreled with him, because he would 5 
subtract from his own luxury and extravagance what 
he had promised to allow him, and that his resentment 
was only a plea for the violation of his promise. He 
asserted, that he had done nothing that ought to ex- 
clude him from that subsistence which he thought not 10 
so much a favor, as a debt, since it was offered him 
upon conditions which he had never broken; and that 
his only fault was, that he could not be supported with 
nothing. 

He acknowledged that Lord Tyreonnel often exhorted 15 
him to regulate his method of life, and not to spend all 
his nights in taverns, and that he appeared very desirous 
that he would pass those hours with him, which he so 
freely bestowed upon others. This demand Mr. Savage 
considered as a censure of his conduct, which he could 20 
never patiently bear, and which, in the latter and cooler 
part of his life, was so offensive to him, that he declared 
it as his resolution, ' to spurn that friend who should 
presume to dictate to him'; and it is not likely, that 
in his earlier years he received admonitions with more 25 
calmness. 

He was likewise inclined to resent such expectations, 
as tending to infringe his liberty, of which he was very 
jealous, when it was very necessary to the gratification 
of his passions ; and declared that the request was still 30 
more unreasonable, as the company to which he was 
to have been confined, was insupportably disagreeable. 
This assertion affords another instance of that incon- 
sistency of his writings with his conversation, which 
was so often to be observed. He forgot how lavishly 35 

1 His expression in one of his letters was, * that Lord Tyreon- 
nel had involved his estate, and therefore poorly sought an 
occasion to quarrel with him.' 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 255 

he had, in his Dedication to The Wanderer, extolled 
the delicacy and penetration, the humanity and gene- 
rosity, the candor and politeness of the man, whom, 
when he no longer loved him, he declared to be a wretch 
5 without understanding, without good-nature, and with- 
out justice; of whose name he thought himself obliged 
to leave no trace in any future edition of his writings; 
and accordingly blotted it out of that copy of The 
Wanderer which was in his hands. 

10 During his continuance with the lord Tyrconnel, he 
wrote The Triumph of Health and Mirth, on the re- 
covery of Lady Tyrconnel from a languishing illness. 
This performance is remarkable, not only for the gaiety 
of the ideas, and the melody of the numbers, but for 

15 the agreeable fiction upon which it is formed. Mirth, 
overwhelmed with sorrow for the sickness of her favorite, 
takes a flight in quest of her sister Health, whom she 
finds reclined upon the brow of a lofty mountain, amidst 
the fragrance of perpetual spring, with the breezes of 

20 the morning sporting about her. Being solicited by her 
sister Mirth, she readily promises her assistance, flies 
away in a cloud, and impregnates the waters of Bath 
with new virtues, by which the sickness of Belinda is 
relieved. 

25 As the reputation of his abilities, the particular cir- 
cumstances of his birth and life, the splendor of his 
appearance, and the distinction which was for some 
time paid him by Lord Tyrconnel, entitled him to fa- 
miliarity with persons of higher rank than those to 

30 whose conversation he had been before admitted ; he 
did not fail to gratify that curiosity, which induced him 
to take a nearer view of those whom their birth, their 
employments, or their fortunes, necessarily place at a 
distance from the greatest part of mankind, and to 

35 examine whether their merit was magnified or diminished 
by the medium through which it was contemplated; 
whether the splendor with which they dazzled their 



256 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

admirers was inherent in themselves, or only reflected 
on them by the objects that surrounded them; and 
whether great men were selected for high stations, or 
high stations made great men. 

For this purpose he took all opportunities of con- 5 
versing familiarly with those who were most conspicuous 
at that time for their power or their influence; he 
watched their looser moments, and examined their do- 
mestic behavior with that acuteness which nature had 
given him, and which the uncommon variety of liis life 10 
had contributed to increase, and that inquisitiveness 
which must always be produced in a vigorous mind, 
by an absolute freedom from all pressing or domestic 
engagements. His discernment was quick, and therefore 
he soon found in every person, and in every affair, 15 
something that deserved attention; he was supported 
by others, without any care for himself, and was there- 
fore at leisure to pursue his observations. 

More circumstances to constitute a critic on human 
life could not easily concur; nor indeed could any man, 20 
who assumed from accidental advantages more praise 
than he could justly claim from his real merit, admit 
an acquaintance more dangerous than that of Savage; 
of whom likewise it must be. confessed, that abilities 
really exalted above the common level, or virtue refined 25 
from passion, or proof against corruption, could not 
easily find an abler judge, or a warmer advocate. 

What was the result of Mr. Savage's inquiry, though 
he was not much accustomed to conceal his discoveries, 
it may not be entirely safe to relate, because the per- 30 
sons whose characters he criticised are powerful; and 
power and resentment are seldom strangers; nor would 
it perhaps be wholly just, because what he asserted 
in conversation might, though true in general, be height- 
ened by some momentary ardor of imagination, and, 35 
as it can be delivered only from memory, may be im- 
perfectly represented; so that the picture at first ag- 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 257 

gravated, and then unskillfully copied, may be justly 
suspected to retain no great resemblance of the original. 
It may, however, be observed, that he did not appear 
to have formed very elevated ideas of those to whom 
5 the administration of affairs, or the conduct of parties, 
has been intrusted; who have been considered as the 
advocates of the crown, or the guardians of the people; 
and who have obtained the most implicit confidence, and 
the loudest applauses. Of one particular person, who 

10 has been at one time so popular as to be generally 
esteemed, and at another so formidable as to be uni- 
versally detested, he observed, that his acquisitions had 
been small, or that his capacity was narrow, and that 
the whole range of his mind was from obscenity to 

15 politics, and from politics to obscenity. 

But the opportunity of indulging his speculations on 
great characters was now at an end. He was banished 
from the table of Lord Tyrconnel, and turned again 
adrift upon the world, without prospect of rinding 

20 quickly any other harbor. As prudence was not one 
of the virtues by which he was distinguished, he had 
made no provision against a misfortune like this. And 
though it is not to be imagined but that the separation 
must for some time have been preceded by coldness, 

25 peevishness, or neglect, though it was undoubtedly the 
consequence of accumulated provocations on both sides; 
yet every one that knew Savage will readily believe, 
that to him it was sudden as a stroke of thunder; that, 
though he might have transiently suspected it, he had 

30 never suffered any thought so unpleasing to sink into 
his mind, but that he had driven it away by amusements, 
or dreams of future felicity and affluence, and had 
never taken any measures by which he might prevent 
a precipitation from plenty to indigence. 

35 This quarrel and separation, and the difficulties to 
which Mr. Savage was exposed by them, were soon 
known both to his friends and enemies; nor was it 



258 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

long before lie perceived, from the behavior of both, 
how much is added to the lustre of genius by the orna- 
ments of wealth. 

His condition did not appear to excite much com- 
passion ; for he had not always been careful to use 5 
the advantages he enjoyed with that moderation which 
ought to have been with more than usual caution pre- 
served by him, who knew, if he had reflected, that he 
was only a dependent on the bounty of another,_ whom 
he could expect to support him no longer than he en- 10 
deavored to preserve his favor by complying with his 
inclinations, and whom he nevertheless set at defiance, 
and was continually irritating by negligence or en- 
croachments. 

Examples need not be sought at any great distance 15 
to prove, that superiority of fortune has a natural 
tendency to kindle pride, and that pride seldom fails 
to exert itself in contempt and insult; and if this is 
often the effect of hereditary wealth, and of honors 
enjoyed only by the merit of others, it is some extenua- 20 
tion of any indecent triumphs to which this unhappy 
man may have been betrayed, that his prosperity w T as 
heightened by the force of novelty, and made more 
intoxicating by a sense of the misery in which he had 
so long languished, and perhaps of the insults which 25 
he had formerly borne, and which he might now think 
himself entitled to revenge. It is too common for those 
who have unjustly suffered pain, to inflict it likewise in 
their turn with the same injustice, and to imagine that 
they have a right to treat others as they have themselves 30 
been treated. 

That Mr. Savage was too much elevated by any good 
fortune, is generally known; and some passages of his 
Introduction to The Author to be let sufficiently show, 
that he did not w r holly refrain from such satire as 35 
he afterwards thought very unjust when he was ex- 
posed to it himself; for, when he was afterwards ridi- 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 259 

culed in the character of a distressed poet, he very 
easily discovered that distress was not a proper subject 
for merriment, or topic of invective. He was then able 
to discern, that if misery be the effect of virtue, it 
5 ought to be reverenced ; if of ill-fortune, to be pitied ; 
and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps 
itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which 
it was produced. And the humanity of that man can 
deserve no panegyric, who is capable of reproaching 

10 a criminal in the hands of the executioner. 

But these reflections, though they readily occurred to 
him in the first and last parts of his life, were, I am 
afraid, for a long time forgotten; at least they were, 
like many other maxims, treasured up in his mind rather 

15 for show than use, and operated very little upon his 
conduct, however elegantly he might sometimes explain, 
or however forcibly he might inculcate them. 

His degradation, therefore, from the condition which 
he had enjoyed with such wanton thoughtlessness, was 

20 considered by many as an occasion of triumph. Those 
who had before paid their court to him without success, 
soon returned the contempt which they had suffered; 
and they who had received favors from him, for of 
such favors as he could bestow he was very liberal, 

25 did not alwa} T s remember them. So much more certain 
are the effects of resentment than of gratitude: it is 
not only to many more pleasing to recollect those faults 
which place others below them, than those virtues by 
which they are themselves comparatively depressed; but 

30 it is likewise more easy to neglect, than to recompense ; 
and though there are few who will practise a laborious 
virtue, there will never be wanting multitudes that will 
indulge an easy vice. 

Savage, however, was very little disturbed at the 

35 marks of contempt which his ill-fortune brought upon 
him from those whom he never esteemed, and with 
whom he never considered himself as levelled by any 



260 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

calamities : and though it was not without some un- 
easiness that he saw some, whose friendship he valued, 
change their behavior; he yet observed their coldness 
without much emotion, considered them as the slaves 
of fortune and the worshippers of prosperity, and was 5 
more inclined to despise them, than to lament himself. 

It does not appear that, after this return of his 
wants, he found mankind equally favorable to him, 
as at his first appearance . in the world. His story, 
though in reality not less melancholy, was less affecting, 10 
because it was no longer new; it therefore procured 
. him no new friends ; and those that had formerly re- 
lieved him, thought they might now consign him to 
others. He was now likewise considered by many rather 
as criminal, than as unhappy ; for the friends of Lord 15 
Tyrconnel, and of his mother, were sufficiently indus- 
trious to publish his weaknesses, which were indeed very 
numerous; and nothing was forgotten, that might make 
him either hateful or ridiculous. 

It cannot but be imagined that such representations 20 
of his faults must make great numbers less sensible of 
his distress; many, who had only an opportunity to 
hear one part, made no scruple to propagate the ac- 
count which they received; many assisted their circula- 
tion from malice or revenge ; and perhaps many pre- 25 
tended to credit them, that they might with a better 
grace withdraw their regard, or withhold their assist- 
ance. 

Savage, however, was not one of those who suffered 
himself to be injured without resistance, nor was less 30 
diligent in exposing the faults of Lord Tyrconnel, over 
whom he obtained at least this advantage, that he drove 
him first to the practice of outrage and violence; for 
he was so much provoked by the wit and virulence of 
Savage, that he came with a number of attendants, that 35 
did no honor to his courage, to beat him at a coffee- 
house. But it happened that he had left the place a 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 261 

few minutes ; and his lordship had, without danger, the 
pleasure of boasting how he would have treated him. 
Mr. Savage went next day to repay his visit at his 
own house; but was prevailed on, by his domestics, 
5 to retire without insisting upon seeing him. 

Lord Tyrconnel was accused by Mr. Savage of some 
actions which scarcely any provocations will be thought 
sufficient to justify; such as seizing what he had in his 
lodgings, and other instances of wanton cruelty, by 

10 which he increased the distress of Savage, without any 
advantage to himself. 

These mutual accusations were retorted on both sides 
for many years, with the utmost degree of virulence 
and rage; and time seemed rather to augment than 

15 diminish their resentment. That the anger of Mr. Sav- 
age should be kept alive, is not strange, because he felt 
every day the consequences of the quarrel; but it 
might reasonably have been hoped, that Lord Tyrconnel 
might have relented, and at length have forgot those 

20 provocations, which, however they might have once in- 
flamed him, had not in reality much hurt him. 

The spirit of Mr. Savage indeed never suffered him 
to solicit a reconciliation; he returned reproach for 
reproach, and insult for insult; his superiority of wit 

25 supplied the disadvantages of his fortune, and enabled 
him to form a party, and prejudice great numbers in 
his favor. 

But though this might be some gratification of his 
vanity, it afforded very little relief to his necessities; 
and he was very frequently reduced to uncommon hard- 
ships, of which, however, he never made any mean or 
importunate complaints, being formed rather to bear 
misery with fortitude, than enjoy prosperity with mod- 
eration. 
5 He now thought himself again at liberty to expose the 
cruelty of his mother; and therefore, I believe, about 
this time, published The Bastard, a poem remarkable 



262 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

for the vivacious sallies of thought in the beginning, 
where he makes a pompous enumeration of the imagin- 
ary advantages of base birth ; and the pathetic senti- 
ments at the end, where he recounts the real calamities 
which he suffered by the crime of his parents. 5 

The vigor and spirit of the verses, the peculiar cir- 
cumstances of the author, the novelty of the subject, 
and the notoriety of the story to which the allusions 
are made, procured this performance a very favorable 
reception; great numbers were immediately dispersed, 10 
and editions were multiplied with unusual rapidity. 

One circumstance attended the publication which Sav- 
age used to relate with great satisfaction. His mother, 
to whom the poem was ' with due reverence ? inscribed, 
happened then to be at Bath, where she could not 15 
conveniently retire from censure, or conceal herself from 
observation; and no sooner did the reputation of the 
poem begin to spread, than she heard it repeated in 
all places of concourse; nor could she enter the assembly- 
rooms, or cross the walks, without being saluted with 20 
some lines from The Bastard. 

This was perhaps the first time that ever she dis- 
covered a sense of shame, and on this occasion the 
power of wit was very conspicuous; the wretch who 
had, without scruple, proclaimed herself an adulteress, 25 
and who had first endeavored to starve her son, then 
to transport him, and afterwards to hang him, was 
not able to bear the representation of her own conduct; 
but fled from reproach, though she felt no pain from 
guilt, and left Bath with the utmost haste, to shelter 30 
herself among the crowds of London. 

Thus Savage had the satisfaction of finding, that, 
though he could not reform his mother, he could punish 
her, and that he did not always suffer alone. 

The pleasure which he received from this increase of 35 
his poetical reputation, was sufficient for some time to 
overbalance the miseries of want, which this perform- | 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 263 

ance did not much alleviate; for it was sold for a very 
trivial sum to a bookseller, who, though the success was 
so uncommon that five impressions were sold, of which 
many were undoubtedly very numerous, had not gene- 
5rosity sufficient to admit the unhappy writer to any 
part of the profit. 

The sale of this poem was always mentioned by Sav- 
age with the utmost elevation of heart, and referred 
to by him as an incontestable proof of a general ac- 

10 knowledgment of his abilities. It was indeed the only 
production of which he could justly boast a general 
reception. 

But though he did not lose the opportunity which 
success gave him, of setting a high rate on his abilities, 

15 but paid due deference to the suffrages of mankind 
when they were given in his favor, he did not suffer 
his esteem of himself to depend upon others, nor found 
any thing sacred in the voice of the people when they 
were inclined to censure him; he then readily showed 

20 the foil} 7 of expecting that the public should judge 
right, observed how slowly poetical merit had often 
forced its way into the world; he contented himself 
with the applause of men of judgment, and was some- 
what disposed to exclude all those from the character 

25 of men of judgment who did not applaud him. 

But he was at other times more favorable to man- 
kind than to think them blind to the beauties of his 
works, and imputed the slowness of their sale to other 
causes; either they were published at a time when the 

30 town was empty, or when the attention of the public 
was engrossed by some struggle in the Parliament, or 
some other object of general concern; or they were by 
the neglect of the publisher not diligently dispersed, 
or by his avarice not advertised with sufficient frequency. 

35 Address, or industry, or liberality, was always wanting ; 
and the blame was laid rather on any person than the 
author. 



264 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

By arts like these, arts which every man practises in 
some degree, and to which too much of the little tran- 
quillity of life is to be ascribed, Savage was always 
able to live at peace with himself. Had he indeed only 
made use of these expedients to alleviate the loss or 5 
want of fortune or reputation, or any other advantages 
which it is not in man's power to bestow upon himself, 
they might have been justly mentioned as instances of 
a philosophical mind, and very properly proposed to 
the imitation of multitudes, who, for want of diverting 10 
their imaginations with the same dexterity, languish 
under afflictions which might be easily removed. 

It were doubtless to be wished that truth and reason 
were universally prevalent; that every thing were 
esteemed according to its real value ; and that men 15 
would secure themselves from being disappointed in 
their endeavors after happiness, by placing it only in 
virtue, which is always to be obtained; but, if adven- 
titious and foreign pleasures must be pursued, it would 
be perhaps of some benefit, since that pursuit must f re- 20 
quently be fruitless, if the practice of Savage could 
be taught, that folly might be an antidote to folly, 
and one fallacy be obviated by another. 

But the danger of this pleasing intoxication must 
not be concealed ; nor indeed can any one, after having 25 
observed the life of Savage, need to be cautioned against 
it. By imputing none of his miseries to himself, he 
continued to act upon the same principles, and to follow 
the same path; was never made wiser by his sufferings, 
nor preserved by one misfortune from falling into an- 30 
other. He proceeded throughout his life to tread the 
same steps on the same circle; always applauding his 
past conduct, or at least forgetting it to amuse himself 
with phantoms of happiness, which were dancing before 
him; and willingly turned his eyes from the light of 35 
reason, when it would have discovered the illusion, and 
shown him, what he never wished to see, his real state. 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 265 

He is even accused, after having lulled his imagina- 
tion with those ideal opiates, of having tried the same 
experiment upon his conscience; and, having accustomed 
himself to impute all deviations from the right to for- 
5 eign causes, it is certain that he was upon every occa- 
sion too easily reconciled to himself, and that he ap- 
peared very little to regret those practices which had 
impaired his reputation. The reigning error of his life 
was, that he mistook the love for the practice of virtue, 

10 and was indeed not so much a good man as the friend 
of goodness. 

This at least must be allowed him, that he always 
preserved a strong sense of the dignity, the beauty, and 
the necessity of virtue; and that he never contributed 

15 deliberately to spread corruption amongst mankind. His 
actions, which were generally precipitate, were often 
blameable; but his writings, being the productions of 
study, uniformly tended to the exaltation of the mind, 
and the propagation of morality and piety. 

20 These writings may improve mankind, when his fail- 
ings shall be forgotten: and therefore he must be con- 
sidered, upon the whole, as a benefactor to the world; 
nor can his personal example do any hurt, since who- 
ever hears of his faults will hear of the miseries which 

25 they brought upon him, and which would deserve less 
pity, had not his condition been such as made his 
faults pardonable. He may be considered as a child 
exposed to all the temptations of indigence, at an age 
when resolution was not yet strengthened by conviction, 

30 nor virtue confirmed by habit ; a circumstance which, 
in his Bastard, he laments in a very affecting manner : 

No mother's care 

Shielded my infant innocence with prayer : 
No father's guardian-hand my youth maintain'd, 
35 Call'd forth my virtues, or from vice restrain'd. 

The Bastard, however it might provoke or mortify 
his mother, could not be expected to melt her to com- 



266 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

passion, so that he was still under the same want of 
the necessities of life; and he therefore exerted all 
the interest which his wit, or his birth, or his mis- 
fortunes, could procure, to obtain, upon the death of 
Eusden, the place of Poet Laureate, and prosecuted his 5 
application with so much diligence, that the King pub- 
licly declared it his intention to bestow it upon him; 
but such was the fate of Savage, that even the King, 
when he intended his advantage, was disappointed in 
his schemes ; for the Lord Chamberlain, who has the 10 
disposal of the laurel, as one of the appendages of his 
office, either did not know the King's design, or did 
n'ot approve it, or thought the nomination of the Laureate 
an encroachment upon his rights, and therefore bestowed 
the laurel upon Colley Gibber. 15 

Mr. Savage, thus disappointed, took a resolution of 
applying to the Queen, that, having once given him 
life, she would enable him to support it, and therefore 
published a short poem on her birthday, to which he 
gave the odd title of Volunteer Laureate. The event of 20 
this essay he has himself related in the following letter, 
which he prefixed to the poem, when he afterwards 
reprinted it in The Gentleman's Magazine, from whence 
I have copied it entire, as this was one of the few 
attempts in which Mr. Savage succeeded. 25 

'Mr. Urban: 

' In your Magazine for February you published the 
last Volunteer Laureate, written on a very melancholy 
occasion, the death of the royal patroness of arts and 
literature in general, and of the author of that poem 30 
in particular; I now send you the first that Mr. Savage 
wrote under that title. — This gentleman, notwithstand- 
ing a very considerable interest, being, on the death 
of Mr. Eusden, disappointed of the Laureate's place, 
wrote the before-mentioned poem ; which was no sooner 35. 
published, but the late Queen sent to a bookseller for 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 267 

it. The author had not at that time a friend either 
to get him introduced, or his poem presented at Court; 
yet such was the unspeakable goodness of that Princess, 
that, notwithstanding this act of ceremony was wanting, 
5 in a few days after publication, Mr. Savage received a 
bank-bill of fifty pounds, and a gracious message from 
Her Majesty, by the Lord North and Guildford, to this 
effect : " That Her Majesty was highly pleased with the 
verses; that she took particularly kind his lines there 

10 relating to the King ; that he had permission to write 
annually on the same subject; and that he should yearly 
receive the like present, till something better (which 
was Her Majesty's intention) could be done for him." 
After this, he was permitted to present one of his an- 

15nual poems to Her Majesty, had the honor of kissing 
her hand, and met with the most gracious reception. 

Yours, &e.' 

Such was the performance/ and such its reception; 
a reception, which, though by no means unkind, was yet 
20 not in the highest degree generous: to chain down the 
genius of a writer to an annual panegyric, showed in 
the Queen too much desire of hearing her own praises, 
and a greater regard to herself than to him on whom 
her bounty was conferred. It was a kind of avaricious 
25 generosity, by which flattery was rather purchased than 
genius rewarded. 

Mrs. Oldfield had formerly given him the same allow- 
ance with much more heroic intention: she had no 
other view than to enable him to prosecute his studies, 
30 and to set himself above the want of assistance, and 
was contented with doing good without stipulating for 
encomiums. 

Mr. Savage, however, was not at liberty to make 
exceptions, but was ravished with the favors which he 
35 had received, and -probably yet more with those which 
1 This poem is inserted in the late collection. 



268 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

he was promised; he considered himself now as a favor- 
ite of the Queen, and did not doubt but a few annual 
poems would establish him in some profitable employ- 
ment. 

He therefore assumed the title of i Volunteer Lau- 5 
reate/ not without some reprehensions from Cibber, who 
informed him, that the title of i Laureate ' was a mark 
of honor conferred by the King, from whom all honor 
is derived, and which therefore no man has a right to 
bestow upon himself; and added, that he might with 10 
equal propriety style himself a Volunteer Lord or 
Volunteer Baronet. It cannot be denied that the 
remark was just ; but Savage did not think any 
title, which was conferred upon Mr. Cibber, so 
honorable as that the usurpation of it could be 15 
imputed to him as an instance of very exorbitant 
vanity, and therefore continued to write under the 
same title, and received every year the same re- 
ward. 

He did not appear to consider these encomiums as 20 
tests of his abilities, or as any thing more than annual 
hints to the Queen of her promise, or acts of ceremony, 
by the performance of which he was entitled to his 
pension, and therefore did not labor them with great 
diligence, or print more than fifty each year, except 25 
that for some of the last years he regularly inserted them 
in The Gentleman's Magazine, by which they were dis- 
persed over the kingdom. 

Of some of them he had himself so low an opinion, 
that he intended to omit them in the collection of poems, 30 
for which he printed proposals, and solicited subscrip- 
tions; nor can it seem strange, that, being confined to 
the same subject, he should be at some times indolent, 
and at others unsuccessful; that he should sometimes 
delay a disagreeable task till it was too late to perform 35 
it well; or that he should sometimes repeat the same 
sentiment on the same occasion, or at others be misled 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 269 

by an attempt after novelty to forced conceptions and 
far-fetched images. 

He wrote indeed with a double intention, which sup- 
plied him with some variety; for his business was, to 
5 praise the Queen for the favors which he had received, 
and to complain to her of the delay of those which she 
had promised: in some of his pieces, therefore, gratitude 
is predominant, and in some discontent; in some, he 
represents himself as happy in her patronage; and, 

10 in others, as disconsolate to find himself neglected. 
Her promise, like other promises made to this un- 
fortunate man, was never performed, though he took 
sufficient care that it should not be forgotten. The 
publication of his Volunteer Laureate procured him no 

15 other reward than a regular remittance of fifty pounds. 

He was not so depressed by his disappointments as 

to neglect any opportunity that was offered of advancing 

his interest. When the Princess Anne was married, 

he wrote a poem upon her departure, only, as he de- 

20 clared, ' because it was expected from him/ and he 
was not willing to bar his own prospects by any appear- 
ance of neglect. 1 

He never mentioned any advantage gained by this 
poem, or any regard that was paid to it; and therefore 

25 it is likely that it was considered at Court as an act 
of duty, to which he was obliged by his dependence, 
and which it was therefore not necessary to reward 
by any new favor : or perhaps the Queen really intended 
his advancement, and therefore thought it superfluous 

30 to lavish presents upon a man whom she intended to 
establish for life. 

About this time not only his hopes were in danger of 
being frustrated, but his pension likewise of being ob- 
structed by an accidental calumny. The writer of The 

35 Daily Courant, a paper then published under the direc- 
tion of the ministry, charged him with a crime, which 
1 Printed in the late collection. 



270 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

though not very great in itself, would have been re- 
markably invidious in him, and might \ery justly have 
incensed the Queen against him. He was accused by 
name of influencing elections against the Court, by ap- 
pearing at the head of a Tory mob ; nor did the accuser 5 
fail to aggravate his crime, by representing it as the 
effect of the most atrocious ingratitude, and a kind of 
rebellion against the Queen, who had first preserved him 
from an infamous death, and afterwards distinguished 
him by her favor, and supported him by her charity. 10 
The charge, as it was open and confident, was like- 
wise by good fortune very particular. The place of 
the transaction was mentioned, and the whole series 
of the rioter's conduct related. This exactness made 
Mr. Savage's vindication easy; for he never had in his 15 
life seen the place which was declared to be the scene 
of his wickedness, nor ever had been present in any 
town when its representatives were chosen. This answer 
he therefore made haste to publish, with all the circum- 
stances necessary to make it credible ; and very reason- 20 
ably demanded, that the accusation should be retracted 
in the same paper, that he might no longer suffer the 
imputation of sedition and ingratitude. This demand 
was likewise pressed by him in a private letter to the 
author of the paper, who either trusting to the pro- 25 
tection of those whose defense he had undertaken, or 
having entertained some personal malice against Mr. 
Savage, or fearing lest, by retracting so confident an 
assertion, he should impair the credit of his paper, 
refused to give him that satisfaction. 30 

Mr. Savage therefore thought it necessary, to his 
own vindication, to prosecute him in the King's Bench; 
but as he did not find any ill effects from the accusa- 
tion, having sufficiently cleared his innocence, he thought 
any farther procedure would have the appearance of 35 
revenge; and therefore willingly dropped it. 

He saw soon afterwards a process commenced in the 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 271 

same court against himself, on an information in which 
he was accused of writing and publishing an obscene 
pamphlet. 

It was always Mr. Savage's desire to be distinguished; 
5 and, when any controversy became popular, he never 
wanted some reason for engaging in it with great ardor, 
and appearing at the head of the party which he had 
chosen. As he was never celebrated for his prudence, 
he had no sooner taken his side, and informed himself 

10 of the chief topics of the dispute, than he took all 
opportunities of asserting and propagating his prin- 
ciples, without much regard to his own interest, or 
any other visible design than that of drawing upon him- 
self the attention of mankind. 

15 The dispute between the Bishop of London and the 
Chancellor is well known to have been for some time 
the chief topic of political conversation; and therefore 
Mr. Savage, in pursuance of his character, endeavored 
to become conspicuous among the controvertists with 

20 which every coffee-house was filled on that occasion. He 
was an indefatigable opposer of all the claims of ecclesias- 
tical power, though he did not know on what they were 
founded; and was therefore no friend to the Bishop 
of London. But he had another reason for appearing 

25 as a warm advocate for Dr. Rundle ; for he was the 
friend of Mr. Foster and Mr. Thomson, who were the 
friends of Mr. Savage. 

Thus remote was his interest in the question, which 
however, as he imagined, concerned him so nearly, that 

30 it was not sufficient to harangue and dispute, but nec- 
essary likewise to write upon it. 

He therefore engaged with great ardor in a new 
poem, called by him The Progress of a Divine; in which 
he conducts a profligate priest, by all the gradations 

35 of wickedness, from a poor curacy in the country to 
the highest preferments of the church; and describes, 
with that humor which was natural to him, and that 



272 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

knowledge which was extended to all the diversities of 
human life, his behavior in every station; and insinuates 
that this priest, thus accomplished, found at last a 
patron in the Bishop of London. 

When he was asked by one of his friends, on what 5 
pretense he could charge the bishop with such an action ; 
he had no more to say than that he had only inverted 
the accusation; and that he thought it reasonable to 
believe, that he who obstructed the rise of a good man 
without reason, would, for bad reasons, promote the 10 
exaltation of a villain. 

The clergy were universally provoked by this satire; 
and Savage, who, as was his constant practice, had set 
his name to his performance, was censured in The 
Weekly Miscellany l with severity, which he did not seem 15 
inclined to forget. 

But a return of invective was not thought a sufficient 
punishment. The court of King's Bench was therefore 
moved against him; and he was obliged to return an 
answer to a charge of obscenity. It was urged in his 20 
defense, that obscenity was criminal when it was in- 
tended to promote the practice of vice; but that Mr. 
Savage had only introduced obscene ideas, with the 
view of exposing them to detestation, and of amending 
the age by showing the deformity of wickedness. This 25 

1 A short satire was likewise published in the same paper, in 
which were the following lines : 

For cruel murder doom'd to hempen death, 
Savage, by royal grace, prolong'd his breath. 
Well might you think he spent his future years 
In prayer, and fasting, and repentant tears. 
— But, ' O vain hope ! ' — the truly Savage cries, 
1 Priests, and their slavish doctrines, I despise. 

Shall I 

Who, by free-thinking to free action fir'd. 

In midnight brawls a deathless name acquir'd, 

Now stoop to learn of ecclesiastic men? — 

No, arm'd with rhyme, at priests I'll take my aim, 

Though prudence bids me murder but their fame.' 

Weekly Miscellany. 

An answer was published in The Gentleman's Magazine, 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 273 

plea was admitted; and Sir Philip Yorke, who then 
presided in that court, dismissed the information with 
encomiums upon the purity and excellence of Mr. Sav- 
age's writings. 
5 The prosecution, however, answered in some measure 
the purpose of those by whom it was set on foot; for 
Mr. Savage was so far intimidated by it, that, when the 
edition of his poem was sold, he did not venture to 
reprint it; so that it was in a short time forgotten, or 

10 forgotten by all but those whom it offended. 

It is said that some endeavors were used to incense 
the queen against him: but he found advocates to ob- 
viate at least part of their effect; for, though he 
was never advanced, he still continued to receive his 

15 pension. 

This poem drew more infamy upon him than any 
incident of his life; and, as his conduct cannot be 
vindicated, it is proper to secure his memory from re- 



written by an unknown hand, from which the following lines 
are selected : 

Transform'd by thoughtless rage, and midnight wine, 
From malice free, and push'd without design ; 
In equal brawl if Savage lung'ed a thrust, 
And brought the youth a victim to the dust, 
So strong the hand of accident appears, 
The royal hand from guilt and vengeance clears. 

Instead of wasting ' all thy future years, 
Savage, in prayer and vain repentant tears,' 
Exert thy pen to mend a vicious age, 
To curb the priest, and sink his high-church rage; 
To show what frauds the holy vestments hide, 
The nests of av'rice, lust, and pedant pride : 
Then change the scene, let merit brightly shine, 
And round the patriot twist the wreath divine ; 
The heav'nly guide deliver down to fame ; 
In well-tun'd lays transmit a Foster's name ; 
Touch ev'ry passion with harmonious art, 
Exalt the genius, and correct the heart. 
Thus future times shall royal grace extol : 
Thus polish'd lines thy present fame enrol. 

But grant 

-Maliciously that Savage plung'd the steel, 



And made the youth its shining vengeance feel ; 
My soul abhors the act, the man detests, 
But more the bigotry in priestly breasts. 

Gentleman's Magazine, May, 1735. 



274 SELECTIONS FRO 21 JOHNSON 

proach, by informing those whom he made his enemies, 
that he never intended to repeat the provocation; and 
that, though, whenever he thought he had any reason 
to complain of the clergy, he used to threaten them with 
a new edition of The Progress of a Divine, it was his 5 
calm and settled resolution to suppress it for ever. 

He once intended to have made a better reparation 
for the folly or injustice with which he might be charged, 
by writing another poem, called The Progress of a Free- 
thinker, whom he intended to lead through all the stages 10 
of vice and folly, to convert him from virtue to wicked- 
ness, and from religion to infidelity, by all the modish 
sophistry used for that purpose; and at last to dismiss 
him by his own hand into the other world. 

That he did not execute this design is a real loss to 15 
mankind; for he was too well acquainted with all the 
scenes of debauchery to have failed in his representa- 
tions of them, and too zealous for virtue not to have 
represented them in such a manner as should expose 
them either to ridicule or detestation. 20 

But this plan was, Kke others, formed and laid aside, 
till the vigor of his imagination was spent, and the 
effervescence of invention had subsided; but soon gave 
way to some other design, which pleased by its novelty 
for a while, and then was neglected like the former. 25 

He was still in his usual exigencies, having no certain 
support but the pension allowed him by the queen, 
which, though it might have kept an exact economist 
from want, was very far from being sufficient for Mr. 
Savage, who had never been accustomed to dismiss any 30 
of his appetites without the gratification which they 
solicited, and whom nothing but want of money with- 
held from partaking of every pleasure that fell within 
his view. 

His conduct with regard to his pension was very 35 
particular. No sooner had he changed the bill, than 
he vanished from the sight of all his acquaintances, 



TEE LIFE OF SAVAGE 275 

and lay for some time out of the reach of all the in- 
quiries that friendship or curiosity could make after 
him. At length he appeared again penniless as before, 
but never informed even those whom he seemed to re- 
5 gard most where he had been ; nor was his retreat ever 
discovered. 

This was his constant practice during the whole time 
that he received the pension from the queen : he regu- 
larly disappeared and returned. He, indeed, affirmed 

10 that he retired to study, and that the money supported 
him in solitude for many months; but his friends de- 
clared, that the short time in which it was spent suffi- 
ciently confuted his own account of his conduct. 
His politeness and his wit still raised him friends, 

15 who were desirous of setting him at length free from 
that indigence by which he had been hitherto oppressed; 
and therefore solicited Sir Robert Walpole in his favor 
with so much earnestness, that they obtained a promise 
of the next place that should become vacant, not ex- 

20 ceeding two hundred pounds a year. This promise was 
made with an uncommon declaration, ' that it was not 
the promise of a minister to a petitioner, but of a friend 
to his friend.' 

Mr. Savage now concluded himself set at ease for 

25 ever, and, as he observes in a poem written on that 
incident of his life, 6 trusted and was trusted ' ; but soon 
found that his confidence was ill-grounded, and this 
friendly promise was not inviolable. He spent a long 
time in solicitations, and at last despaired and desisted. 

30 He did not indeed deny that he had given the minister 
some reason to believe that he should not strengthen his 
own interest by advancing him, for he had taken care 
to distinguish himself in coffee-houses as an advocate 
for the ministry of the last years of Queen Anne, and 

35 was always ready to justify the conduct, and exalt 
the character of Lord Bolingbroke, whom he mentions 
with great regard in an Epistle upon Authors, which 



276 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

he wrote about that time, but was too wise to publish, 
and of which only some fragments have appeared, in- 
serted by him in the Magazine after his retirement. 

To despair was not, however, the character of Savage; 
when one patronage failed, he had recourse to another. 5 
The prince was now extremely popular, and had very 
liberally rewarded the merit of some writers whom Mr. 
Savage did not think superior to himself, and therefore 
he resolved to address a poem to him. 

For this purpose he made choice of a subject which 10 
could regard only persons of the highest rank and great- 
est affluence, and which was therefore proper for a poem 
"intended to procure the patronage of a prince; and, 
having retired for some time to Richmond, that he might 
prosecute his design in full tranquillity, without the 15 
temptations of pleasure, or the solicitations of creditors, 
by which his meditations were in equal danger of being 
disconcerted, he produced a poem On Public Spirit, 
with regard to Public Works. 

The plan of this poem is very extensive, and comprises 20 
a multitude of topics, each of which might furnish 
matter sufficient for a long performance, and of which 
some have already employed more eminent writers ; but 
as he was perhaps not fully acquainted with the whole 
extent of his own design, and was writing to obtain 25 
a supply of wants too pressing to admit of long or 
accurate inquiries, he passes negligently over many pub- 
lic works, which, even in his own opinion, deserved to 
be more elaborately treated. 

But, though he may sometimes disappoint his reader 30 
by transient touches upon these subjects, which ha^e 
often been considered, and therefore naturally raise ex- 
pectations, he must be allowed amply to compensate 
his omissions, by expatiating, in the conclusion of his 
work, upon a kind of beneficence not yet celebrated 35 
by any eminent poet, though it now appears more sus- . 
ceptible of embellishments, more adapted to exalt the 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 277 

ideas, and affect the passions, than many of those which 
have hitherto been thought most worthy of the orna- 
ments of verse. The settlement of colonies in unin- 
habited countries, the establishment of those in security, 
5 whose misfortunes have made their own country no 
longer pleasing or safe, the acquisition of property 
without injury to any, the appropriation of the waste 
and luxuriant bounties of nature, and the enjoyment 
of those gifts which heaven has scattered upon regions 

10 uncultivated and unoccupied, cannot be considered with- 
out giving rise to a great number of pleasing ideas, 
and bewildering the imagination in delightful prospects; 
and, therefore, whatever speculations they may produce 
in those who have confined themselves to political studies, 

15 naturally fixed the attention, and excited the applause, 
of a poet. The politician, when he considers men driven 
into other countries for shelter, and obliged to retire to 
forests and deserts, and pass their lives, and fix their 
posterity, in the remotest corners of the world, to avoid 

20 those hardships which they suffer or fear in their native 
place, may very properly inquire, why the legislature 
does not provide a remedy for these miseries, rather 
than encourage an escape from them. He may con- 
clude that the flight of every honest man is a loss to the 

25 community; that those who are unhappy without guilt 
ought to be relieved ; and the life, which is overburdened 
by accidental calamities, set at ease by the care of the 
public; and that those, who have by misconduct for- 
feited their claim to favor, ought rather to be made use- 

30 ful to the society which they have injured, than driven 
from it. But the poet is employed in a more pleasing 
undertaking than that of proposing laws which, how- 
ever just or expedient, will never be made; or endeavor- 
ing to reduce to rational schemes of government so- 

35 cieties which were formed by chance, and are conducted 
by the private passions of those who preside in them. 
He guides the unhappy fugitive from want and per- 



278 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

secution, to plenty, quiet, and security, and seats him 
in scenes of peaceful solitude, and undisturbed repose. 

Savage has not forgotten, amidst the pleasing senti- 
ments which this prospect of retirement suggested to 
him, to censure those crimes which have been generally 5 
committed by the discoverers of new regions, and to 
expose the enormous wickedness of making war upon 
barbarous nations because they cannot resist, and of 
invading countries because they are fruitful; of extend- 
ing navigation only to propagate vice, and of visiting 10 
distant lands only to lay them waste. He has asserted 
-the natural equality of mankind, and endeavored to sup- 
press that pride which inclines men to imagine that 
right is the consequence of power. 

His description of the various miseries which force 15 
men to seek for refuge in distant countries affords 
another instance of his proficiency in the important 
and extensive study of human life; and the tenderness 
with which he recounts them, another proof of his hu- 
manity and benevolence. 20 

It is observable that the close of this poem discovers 
a change which experience had made in Mr. Savage's 
opinions. In a poem written by him in his youth, 
and published in his Miscellanies, he declares his con- 
tempt of the contracted views and narrow prospects 25 
of the middle state of life, and declares his resolution 
either to tower like the cedar, or be trampled like the 
shrub; but in this poem, though addressed to a prince, 
he mentions this state of life as comprising those who 
ought most to attract reward, those who merit most 30 
the confidence of power, and the familiarity of great- 
ness; and, accidentally mentioning this passage to one 
of his friends, declared, that in his opinion all the 
virtue of mankind was comprehended in that state. 

In describing villas and gardens, he did not omit to 35 
condemn that absurd custom which prevails among the ' 
English, of permitting servants to receive money from 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 279 

strangers for the entertainment that they receive, and 

therefore inserted in his poem these lines: 

But what the flow'ring pride of gardens rare, 
However royal, or however fair, 
5 If gates, which to access should still give way, 

Ope hut, like Peter's paradise, for pay? 
If perquisited varlets frequent stand, 
And each new walk must a new tax demand? 
What foreign eye hut with contempt surveys? 
10 What Muse shall from oblivion snatch their praise? 

But before the publication of his performance he re- 
collected that the queen allowed her garden and cave 
at Richmond to be shown for money; and that she 
so openly countenanced the practice, that she had be- 

15 stowed the privilege of showing them as a place of 
profit on a man, whose merit she valued herself upon 
rewarding, though she gave him only the liberty of 
disgracing his country. 

He therefore thought, with more prudence than was 

20 often exerted by him, that the publication of these lines 
might be officiously represented as an insult upon the 
queen, to whom he owed his life and his subsistence : 
and that the propriety of his observation would be no 
security against the censures which the unseasonableness 

25 of it might draw upon him ; he therefore suppressed 
the passage in the first edition, but after the queen's 
death thought the same caution no longer necessary, and 
restored it to the proper place. 

The poem was, therefore, published without any po- 

30 litical faults, and inscribed to the prince; but Mr. Sav- 
age, having no friend upon whom he could prevail 
to present it to him, had no other method of attracting 
his observation than the publication of frequent adver- 
tisements, and therefore received no reward from his 

35 patron, however generous on other occasions. 

This disappointment he never mentioned without in- 
dignation, being by some means or other confident that 
the prince was not ignorant of his address to him; and 
insinuated that if any advances in popularity could 



280 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

have been made by distinguishing him, he had not writ- 
ten without notice, or without reward. 

He was once inclined to have presented his poem in 
person, and sent to the printer for a copy with that 
design ; but either his opinion changed, or his resolution 5 
deserted him, and he continued to resent neglect without 
attempting to force himself into regard. 

Nor was the public much more favorable than his 
patron; for only seventy- two- were sold, though the 
performance was much commended by some whose judg- 10 
ment in that kind of writing is generally allowed. But 
Savage easily reconciled himself to mankind, without 
imputing any defect to his work, by observing that his 
poem was unluckily published two days after the pro- 
rogation of the Parliament, and by consequence at 15 
a time when all those who could be expected to regard 
it were in the hurry of preparing for their departure, 
or engaged in taking leave of others upon their dis- 
mission from public affairs. 

It must be, however, allowed, in justification of the 20 
public, that this performance is not the most excellent 
of Mr. Savage's works; and that, though it cannot be 
denied to contain many striking sentiments, majestic 
lines, and just observations, it is in general not suffi- 
ciently polished in the language, or enlivened in the 25 
imagery, or digested in the plan. 

Thus his poem contributed nothing to the alleviation 
of his poverty, which was such as very few could have 
supported with equal patience; but to which, it must 
likewise be confessed, that few would have been ex- 30 
posed, who received punctually fifty pounds a year; a 
salary which, though by no means equal to the demands 
of vanity and luxury, is yet found sufficient to support 
families above want, and was undoubtedly more than 
the necessities of life require. 35 

But no sooner had he received his pension, than he 
"withdrew to his darling privacy, from which he returned 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 281 

in a short time to his former distress, and for some part 
of the year generally lived by chance, eating only when 
he was invited to the tables of his acquaintances, from 
which the meanness of his dress often excluded him, 
5 when the politeness and variety of his conversation 
would have been thought a sufficient recompense for 
his entertainment. 

He lodged as much by accident as he dined, and 
passed the night sometimes in mean houses, which are 

10 set open at night to any casual wanderers, sometimes 
in cellars, among the riot and filth of the meanest and 
most profligate of the rabble; and sometimes, when 
he had not money to support even the expenses of these 
receptacles, walked about the streets till he was weary, 

15 and lay down in the summer upon a bulk, or in the 
winter, with his associates in poverty, among the ashes 
of a glass-house. 

In this manner were passed those days and those 
nights which nature had enabled him to have employed 

20 in elevated speculations, useful studies, or pleasing con- 
versation. On a bulk, in a cellar, or in a glass-house, 
among thieves and beggars, was to be found the author 
of The Wanderer, the man of exalted sentiments, ex- 
tensive views, and curious observations: the man whose 

25 remarks on life might have assisted the statesman, whose 
ideas of virtue might have enlightened the moralist, 
whose eloquence might have influenced senates, and 
whose delicacy might have polished courts. 

It cannot but be imagined that such necessities might 

30 sometimes force him upon disreputable practices; and 
it is probable that these lines in The Wanderer were 
occasioned by his reflections on his own conduct : 

Though misery leads to happiness and truth, 
Unequal to the load, this languid youth, 

35 (O, let none censure, if, untried by grief, 

If, amidst woe, untempted by relief), 
He stoop'd reluctant to low arts of shame. 
Which then, ev'n then, he scorn'd, and blush'd to name. 



282 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

Whoever was acquainted with him was certain to be 
solicited for small sums, which the frequency of the 
request made in time considerable; and he was there- 
fore quickly shunned by those who were become familiar 
enough to be trusted with his necessities ; but his 5 
rambling manner of life, and constant appearance at 
houses of public resort, always procured him a new 
succession of friends, whose kindness had not been ex- 
hausted by repeated requests ; so that he was seldom 
absolutely without resources, but had in his utmost 10 
exigencies this comfort, that he always imagined himself 
sure of speedy relief. 

It was observed, that he always asked favors of this 
kind without the least submission or apparent con- 
sciousness of dependence, and that he did not seem 15 
to look upon a compliance with his request as an ob- 
ligation that deserved any extraordinary acknowledg- 
ments; but a refusal was resented by him as an affront, 
or complained of as an injury; nor did he readily 
reconcile himself to those who either denied to lend, 20 
or gave him afterwards any intimation that they ex- 
pected to be repaid. 

He was sometimes so far compassionated by those 
who knew both his merit and distresses, that they re- 
ceived him. into their families, but they soon discovered 25 
him to be a very incommodious inmate; for, being 
always accustomed to an irregular manner of life, he 
could not confine himself to any stated hours, or pay 
any regard to the rules of a family, but would prolong 
his conversation till midnight, without considering that 30 
business might require his friend's application in the 
morning; and, when he had persuaded himself to retire 
to bed, was not, without equal difficulty, called up to 
dinner; it was therefore impossible to pay him any 
distinction without the entire subversion of all economy, 85 
a kind of establishment which, wherever he went, he - 
always appeared ambitious to overthrow. 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 283 

It must, therefore, be acknowledged, in justification 
of mankind, that it was not always by the negligence 
or coldness of his friends that Savage was distressed, 
but because it was in reality very difficult to preserve 
5 him long in a state of ease. To supply him with money 
was a hopeless attempt; for no sooner did he see him- 
self master of a sum sufficient to set him free from 
care for a day, than he became profuse and luxurious. 
When once he had entered a tavern, or engaged in 

10 a scheme of pleasure, he never retired till want of money 
obliged him to some new expedient. If he was enter- 
tained in a family, nothing was any longer to be re- 
garded there but amusements and jollity; wherever Sav- 
age entered, he immediately expected that order and 

15 business should fly before him, that all should thence- 
forward be left to hazard, and that no dull principle 
of domestic management should be opposed to his in- 
clination, or intrude upon his gaiety. 

His distresses, however afflictive, never dejected him; 

20 in his lowest state he wanted not spirit to assert the 
natural dignity of wit, and was always ready to repress 
that insolence which superiority of fortune incited, and 
to trample on that reputation which rose upon any other 
basis than that of merit : he never admitted any gross 

25 familiarities, or submitted to be treated otherwise than 
as an equal. Once, when he was without lodging, meat, 
or clothes, one of his friends, a man not indeed remark- 
able fo'r moderation in his prosperity, left a message, 
that he desired to see him about nine in the morning. 

30 Savage knew that his intention was to assist him; but 
was very much disgusted that he should presume to 
prescribe the hour of his attendance, and, I believe, 
refused to visit him, and rejected his kindness. 

The same invincible temper, whether firmness or ob- 

35stinacy, appeared in his conduct to the lord Tyrconnel, 
from whom he very frequently demanded, that the al- 
lowance which was once paid him should be restored; 



284 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

but with whom he never appeared to entertain for a 
moment the thought of soliciting a reconciliation, and 
whom he treated at once with all the haughtiness of 
superiority, and all the bitterness of resentment. He 
wrote to him, not in a style of supplication or respect, 5 
but of reproach, menace, and contempt; and appeared 
determined, if he ever regained his allowance, to hold 
it only by the right of conquest. 

As many more can discover that a man is richer than 
that he is wiser than themselves, superiority of under- 10 
standing is not so readily acknowledged as that of 
fortune; nor is that haughtiness, which the conscious- 
ness of great abilities incites, borne with the same sub- 
mission as the tyranny of affluence; and therefore Sav- 
age, by asserting his claim to deference and regard, 15 
and by treating those with contempt whom better for- 
tune animated to rebel against him, did not fail to 
raise a great number of enemies in the different classes 
of mankind. Those who thought themselves raised above 
him by the advantages of riches, hated him because they 20 
found no protection from the petulance of his wit. 
Those who were esteemed for their writings feared 
him as a critic, and maligned him as a rival, and almost 
all the smaller wits were his professed enemies. 

Among these Mr. Miller so far indulged his resent- 25 
ment as to introduce him in a farce, and direct him 
to be personated on the stage, in a dress like that which 
he then wore; a mean insult, which only insinuated 
that Savage had but one coat, and which was therefore 
despised by him rather than resented ; for, though he 30 
wrote a lampoon against Miller, he never printed it: 
and as no other person ought to prosecute that revenge 
from which the person who was injured desisted, I shall 
not preserve what Mr. Savage suppressed: of which 
the publication would indeed have been a punishment 85 
too severe for so impotent an assault. 

The great hardships of poverty were to Savage not 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 285 

the want of lodging or of food, but the neglect and 
contempt which it drew upon him. He complained 
that, as his affairs grew desperate, he found his reputa- 
tion for capacity visibly decline; that his opinion in 
5 questions of criticism was no longer regarded, when 
his coat was out of fashion; and that those who, in 
the interval of his prosperity, were always encouraging 
him to great undertakings by encomiums on his genius 
and assurances of success, now received any mention of 

10 his designs with coldness, thought that the subjects on 
which he proposed to write were very difficult, and 
were ready to inform him, that the event of a poem was 
uncertain, that an author ought to employ much time 
in the consideration of his plan, and not presume to 

15 sit down to write in confidence of a few cursory ideas, 
and a superficial knowledge; difficulties were started on 
all sides, and he was no longer qualified for any per- 
formance but The Volunteer Laureate. 

Yet even this kind of contempt never depressed him; 

20 for he always preserved a steady confidence in his own 
capacity, *md believed nothing above his reach which 
he should at any time earnestly endeavor to attain. He 
formed schemes of the same kind with regard to know- 
ledge and to fortune, and flattered himself with advances 

25 to be made in science, as with riches to be enjoyed in 
some distant period of his life. For the acquisition of 
knowledge he was indeed far better qualified than for 
that of riches; for he was naturally inquisitive, and 
desirous of the conversation of those from whom any 

30 information was to be obtained, but by no means solici- 
tous to improve those opportunities that were some- 
times offered of raising his fortune; and he was re- 
markably retentive of his ideas, which, when once he 
was in possession of them, rarely forsook him; a quality 

35 which could nev^r be communicated to his money. 

While he was thus wearing out his life in expectation 
that the queen would some time recollect her promise, he 



286 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

had recourse to the usual practice of writers, and pub- 
lished proposals for printing his works by subscription, 
to which he was encouraged by the success of many 
who had not a better right to the favor of the public; 
but, whatever was the reason, he did not find the world 5 
equally inclined to favor him; and he observed, with 
some discontent, that though he offered his works at 
half-a-guinea, he was able to procure but a small number 
in comparison with those who subscribed twice as much 
to Duck. 10 

Nor was it without indignation that he saw his pro- 
posals neglected by the queen, who patronised Mr. Duck's 
with uncommon ardor, and incited a competition among 
those who attended the court, who should most promote 
his interest, and who should first offer a subscription. 15 
This was a distinction to which Mr. Savage made no 
scruple of asserting, that his birth, his misfortunes, 
and his genius, gave him a fairer title, than could be 
pleaded by him on whom it was conferred. 

Savage's applications were, however, not universally 20 
unsuccessful; for some of the nobility countenanced 
his design, encouraged his proposals, and subscribed 
with great liberality. He related of the Duke of Chandos 
particularly, that, upon receiving his proposals, he sent 
him ten guineas. 25 

But the money which his subscriptions afforded him 
was not less volatile than that which he received from 
his other schemes; whenever a subscription was paid 
him, he went to a tavern; and, as money so collected 
is necessarily received in small sums, he never was able 30 
to send his poems to the press, but for many years 
continued his solicitation, and squandered whatever he 
obtained. 

This project of printing his works was frequently 
revived ; and, as his proposals grew obsolete, new ones 35 
were printed with fresher dates. To form schemes for 
the publication, was one of his favorite amusements; 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 287 

nor was he more at ease than when, with any friend 
who readily fell in with his schemes, he was adjusting 
the print, forming the advertisements, and regulating 
the dispersion of his new edition, which he really in- 
5 tended some time to publish, and which, as long ex- 
perience had shown him the impossibility of printing 
the volume together, he at last determined to divide 
into weekly or monthly numbers, that the profits of the 
first might supply the expenses of the next. 

10 Thus he spent his time in mean expedients and tor- 
menting suspense, living for the greatest part in the 
fear of prosecutions from his creditors, and consequently 
skulking in obscure parts of the town, of which he 
was no stranger to the remotest corners. But wherever 

15 he came, his address secured him friends, whom his 
necessities soon alienated; so that he had perhaps a 
more numerous acquaintance than any man ever before 
attained, there being scarcely any person eminent on 
any account to whom he was not known, or whose char- 

20 acter he was not in some degree able to delineate. 

To the acquisition of this extensive acquaintance every 
circumstance of his life contributed. He excelled in 
the arts of conversation, and therefore willingly prac- 
tised them. He had seldom any home, or even a lodg- 

25 ing in which he could be private ; and therefore was 
driven into public houses for the common conveniences 
of life and supports of nature. He was always ready 
to comply with every invitation, having no employment 
to withhold him, and often no money to provide for 

30 himself ; and by dining with one company, he never 
failed of obtaining an introduction into another. 

Thus dissipated was his life, and thus casual his 
subsistence; yet did not the distraction of his views 
hinder him from reflection, nor the uncertainty of his 

35 condition depress his gaiety. When he had wandered 
about without any fortunate adventure by which he 
was led into a tavern, he sometimes retired into the 



288 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

fields, and was able to employ his mind in study, or 
amuse it with pleasing imaginations; and seldom ap- 
peared to be melancholy, but when some sudden mis- 
fortune had just fallen upon him, and even then in 
a few moments he would disentangle himself from his 5 
perplexity, adopt the subject of conversation, and apply 
his mind wholly to the objects that others presented 
to it. 

This life, unhappy as it may be already imagined, 
was yet embittered, in 1738, with new calamities. The 10 
death of the queen deprived him of all the prospects 
of preferment with which he so long entertained his 
imagination; and, as Sir Robert Walpole had before 
given him reason to believe that he never intended the 
performance of his promise, he was now abandoned 15 
again to fortune. 

He was, however, at that time, supported by a friend; 
and as it was not his custom to look out for distant 
calamities, or to feel any other pain than that which 
forced itself upon his senses, he was not much afflicted 20 
at his loss, and perhaps comforted himself that his 
pension would be now continued without the annual 
tribute of a panegyric. 

Another expectation contributed likewise to support 
him : he had taken a resolution to write a second tragedy 25 
upon the story of Sir Thomas Overbury, in which he 
preserved a few lines of his former play, but made 
a total alteration of the plan, added new incidents, 
and introduced new characters; so that it was a new 
tragedy, not a revival of the former. 30 

Many of his friends blamed him for not making 
choice of another subject; but in vindication of him- 
self, he asserted, that it was not easy to find a better; 
and that he thought it his interest to extinguish the 
memory of the first tragedy, which he could only do 35 
by writing one less defective upon the same story; 
by which he should entirely defeat the artifice of the 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 289 

booksellers, who, after the death of any author of 
reputation, are always industrious to swell his works, 
by uniting his worst productions with his best. 

In the execution of this scheme, however, he pro- 
5 ceeded but slowly, and probably only employed himself 
upon it when he could find no other amusement; but 
he pleased himself with counting the profits, and per- 
haps imagined that the theatrical reputation which he 
was about to acquire would be equivalent to all that 

10 he had lost by the death of his patroness. 

He did not, in confidence of his approaching riches, 
neglect the measures proper to secure the continuance 
of his pension, though some of his favorers thought him 
culpable for omitting to write on her death; but, on 

15 her birthday next year, he gave a proof of the solidity 
of his judgment, and the power of his genius. He 
knew that the track of elegy had been so long beaten, 
that it was impossible to travel in it without treading 
in the footsteps of those who had gone before him; 

20 and that therefore it was necessary, that he might dis- 
tinguish himself from the herd of encomiasts, to find 
out some new walk of funeral panegyric. 

This difficult task he performed in such a manner 
that his poem may be justly ranked among the best 

25 pieces that the death of princes has produced. By 
transferring the mention of her death to her birthday, 
he has formed a happy combination of topics, which 
any other man would have thought it very difficult to 
connect in one view, but which he has united in such 

30 a manner, that the relation between them appears nat- 
ural; and it may be justly said, that what no other 
man would have thought on, it now appears scarcely 
possible for any man to miss. 

The beauty of this peculiar combination of images 

35 is so masterly, that it is sufficient to set this poem above 
censure; and therefore it is not necessary to mention 
many other delicate touches which may be found in 



290 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

it, and which would deservedly be admired in any other 
performance. 

To these proofs of his genius may be added, from 
the same poem, an instance of his prudence, an ex- 
cellence for which he was not so often distinguished ; 5 
he does not forget to remind the king, in the most deli- 
cate and artful manner, of continuing his pension. 

With regard to the success of this address, he was 
for some time in suspense, but was in no great degree 
solicitous about it; and continued his labor upon his 10 
new tragedy with great tranquillity, till the friend who 
had for a considerable time supported him, removing 
his family to another place, took occasion to dismiss 
him. It then became necessary to inquire more dili- 
gently what Avas determined in his affair, having reason 15 
to suspect that no great favor was intended him, be- 
cause he had not received his pension at the usual time. 

It is said that he did not take those methods of 
retrieving his interest which were most likely to suc- 
ceed ; and some of those who were employed in the 20 
exchequer cautioned him against too much violence in 
his proceedings : but Mr. Savage, who seldom regulated 
his conduct by the advice of others, gave way to his 
passion, and demanded of Sir Robert Walpole, at his 
levee, the reason of the distinction that was made be- 25 
tween him and the other pensioners of the queen, with 
a degree of roughness, which perhaps determined him 
to withdraw what had been only delaj^ed. 

Whatever was the crime of which he was accused or 
suspected, and whatever influence was employed against 30 
him, he received soon after an account that took from 
him all hopes of regaining his pension; and he had 
now no prospect of subsistence but from his play, and 
he knew no way of living for the time required to 
finish it. 35 

So peculiar were the misfortunes of this man, de- 
prived of an estate and title by a particular law, ex- 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 291 

posed and abandoned by a mother, defrauded by a 
mother of a fortune which his father had allotted him, 
he entered the world without a friend; and though his 
abilities forced themselves into esteem and reputation, 
5 he was never able to obtain any real advantage, and what- 
ever prospects arose, were always intercepted as he 
began to approach them. The king's intentions in his 
favor were frustrated; his dedication to the prince, 
whose generosity on every other occasion was eminent, 

10 procured him no reward ; Sir Robert Walpole, who 
valued himself upon keeping his promise to others, 
broke it to him without regret; and the bounty of the 
queen was, after her death, withdrawn from him, and 
from him only. 

15 Such were his misfortunes, which yet he bore, not 
only with decency, but with cheerfulness; nor was his 
gaiety clouded even by his last disappointments, though 
he was in a short time reduced to the lowest degree of 
distress, and often wanted both lodging and food. At 

20 this time he gave another instance of the insurmountable 
obstinacy of his spirit: his clothes were worn out; 
and he received notice, that at a coffee-house some 
clothes and linen were left for him; the person who 
sent them did not, I believe, inform him to whom he 

25 was to be obliged, that he might spare the perplexity 
of acknowledging the benefit; but though the offer was 
so far generous, it was made with some neglect of cere- 
monies, which Mr. Savage so much resented, that he 
refused the present, and declined to enter the house 

30 till the clothes that had been designed for him were 
taken a^ay. 

His distress was now publicly known, and his friends, 
therefore, thought it proper to concert some measures 
for his relief; and one of them wrote a letter to him, 

35 in which he expressed his concern l for the miserable 
withdrawing of his pension ' ; and gave him hopes that 
in a short time he should find himself supplied with 



292 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

a competence, l without any dependence on those little 
creatures which we are pleased to call the Great/ 

The scheme proposed for this happy and independent 
subsistence was, that he should retire into Wales, and 
receive an allowance of fifty pounds a year, to be raised 5 
by a subscription, on which he was to live privately in 
a cheap place, without aspiring any more to affluence, 
or having any farther care of reputation. 

This offer Mr. Savage gladly accepted, though with 
intentions very different from those of his friends ; 10 
for they proposed that he should continue an exile from 
London for ever, and spend all the remaining part of 
his life at Swansea; but he designed only to take the 
opportunity which their scheme offered hira, of retreat- 
ing for a short time, that he might prepare his play for 15 
the stage, and his other works for the pre^i, and then 
to return to London to exhibit his tragedy, and live 
upon the profits of his own labor. 

With regard to his works, he proposed very great 
improvements, which would have required mrch time, 20 
or great application; and, when he had finisL .i + m. 
he designed to do justice to his subscribers, by pu : . ;* 
ing them according to his proposals. ^ s 

As he was ready to entertain himself t it h fiJ"* 
pleasures, he had planned out a scheme of lif foi *^ h ^5 
country, of which he had no knowledge but from u?- 
torals and songs. He imagined that he should be trans- 
ported to scenes of flowery felicity, like those which 
one poet has reflected to another; and had projected 
a perpetual round of innocent pleasures, of which he 30 
suspected no interruption from pride, or ignorance, or 
brutality. 

With these expectations he was so enchanted, that 
when he was once gently reproached by a friend for 
submitting to live upon a subscription, and advised 35 
rather by a resolute exertion of his abilities to support 
himself, he could not bear to debar himself from the 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 293 

happiness which was to be found in the calm of a 
cottage, or lose the opportunity of listening, without 
intermission, to the melody of the nightingale, which he 
believed was to be heard from every bramble, and which 
5 he did not fail to mention as a very important part of 
the happiness of a country life. 

While this scheme was ripening, his friends directed 
him to take a lodging in the liberties of the Fleet, that 
he might be secure from his creditors, and sent him 
10 every Monday a guinea, which he commonly spent be- 
fore the next morning, and trusted, after his usual man- 
ner, the :emaining part of the week to the bounty of 
fortune. 

He now be^an very sensibly to feel the miseries of 
15 dependence. Those by whom he was to be supported 
began to prescribe to him with an air of authority, which 
he knew not how decently to resent, nor patiently to 
bear; and he soon discovered, from the conduct of most 
of his subscribers, that he was yet in the hands of 
20 'little e- r:ures.' 

r - lW insolence that he was obliged to suffer, he 
many ^instances, of which none appeared to raise 
.a^.u.don to a greater height than the method 

^' '• : wrs taken of furnishing him with clothes. In- 
25 v • • 

of Consulting him, and allowing him to send a 

tailot his orders for what they thought proper to allow 

him, -'they proposed to send for a tailor to take his 

measure, and then to consult how they should equip 

him. 

30 This treatment was not very delicate, nor was it 
such as Savage's humanity would have suggested to 
him on a like occasion; but it had scarcely deserved 
mention, had it not, by affecting him in an uncommon 
degree, shown the peculiarity of his character. Upon 

35 hearing the design that was formed, he came to the 
lodging of a friend with the most violent agonies of 
rage; and, being asked what it could be that gave him 



294 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

such disturbance, he replied with the utmost vehemence 
of indignation, i That they had sent for a tailor to 
measure him.' 

How the affair ended was never inquired, for fear of 
renewing his uneasiness. It is probable that, upon 5 
recollection, he submitted with a good grace to what 
he could not avoid, and that he discovered no resent- 
ment where he had no power. 

He was, however, not humbled to implicit and univer- 
sal compliance ; for when the gentleman, who had first 10 
informed him of the design to support him by a sub- 
scription, attempted to procure a reconciliation with 
the lord Tyrconnel, he could by no means be prevailed 
upon to comply with the measures that were proposed. 

A letter was written for him 1 to Sir "William Lemon, 15 
to prevail upon him to interpose his good offices with 
Lord Tyrconnel, in which he solicited Sir William's as- 
sistance ' for a man who really needed it as much as 
any man could well do ' ; and informed him, that he 
was retiring l for ever to a place where he should no 20 
more trouble his relations, friends, or enemies ? ; he 
confessed, that his passion had betrayed him to some 
conduct, with regard to Lord Tyrconnel, \ for which he 
could not but heartily ask his pardon ' ; and as he im- 
agined Lord TyrconnePs passion might be yet so high 25 
that he would not ' receive a letter from him/ begged 
that Sir William would endeavor to soften him; and 
expressed his hopes that he would comply with his re- 
quest, and that l so small a relation would not harden 
his heart against him.' 30 

That any man should presume to dictate a letter to 
him, was not very agreeable to Mr. Savage; and there- 
fore he was, before he had opened it, not much inclined 
to approve it. But when he read it, he found it con- 
tained sentiments entirely opposite to his own, and, as 35 
he asserted, to the truth, and therefore, instead of copy- 
*By Mr. Pope. 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 295 

ing it, wrote bis friend a letter full of masculine resent- 
ment and warm expostulations. He very justly observed 
tbat tbe style was too supplicatory, and the representa- 
tion too abject, and that he ought at least to have made 
5 him complain with - the dignity of a gentleman in dis- 
tress.' He declared that he would not write the para- 
graph in which he was to ask Lord TyrconnePs pardon; 
for \ he despised his pardon, and therefore could not 
heartily, and would not hypocritically, ask it. 7 He re- 

10 marked that his friend made a very unreasonable dis- 
tinction between himself and him; for, says he, when 
you mention men of high rank l in your own character/ 
they are ' those little creatures whom we are pleased to 
call the Great ' ; but when you address them ' in mine/ 

15 no servility is sufficiently humble. He then with great 
propriety explained the ill consequences which might 
be expected from such a letter, which his relations would 
print in their own defense, and which would for ever 
be produced as a full answer to all that he should allege 

20 against them ; for he always intended to publish a minute 
account of the treatment which he had received. It is 
to be remembered, to the honor of the gentleman by 
whom this letter was drawn up, that he yielded to Mr. 
Savage's reasons, and agreed that it ought to be sup- 

25 pressed. 

After many alterations and delays, a subscription was 
at length raised, which did not amount to fifty pounds 
a year, though twenty were paid hy one gentleman; 
such was the generosity of mankind, that what had 

SO been done by a player without solicitation, could not 
now r be effected by application and interest; and Savage 
had a great number to court and to obey for a pension 
less than that which Mrs. Oldfield paid him without 
exacting any servilities. 

35 Mr. Savage, however, was satisfied, and willing to 
retire, and was convinced that the allowance, though 
scanty, would be more than sufficient for him, being 



296 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

now determined to commence a rigid economist, and 
to live according to the exactest rules of frugality; for 
nothing was in his opinion more contemptible than 
a man, who, when he knew his income, exceeded it; 
and yet he confessed that instances of such folly were 5 
too common, and lamented that some men were not to 
be trusted with their own money. 

Full of these salutary resolutions, he left London in 
July, 1739, having taken leave with great tenderness of 
his friends, and parted from the author of this nar- 10 
rative with tears in his eyes. He was furnished with 
fifteen guineas, and informed that they would be suffi- 
cient, not only for the expense of his journey, but for 
his support in Wales for some time; and that there 
remained but little more of the first collection. He prom- 15 
ised a strict adherence to his maxims of parsimony, and 
went away in the stage-coach; nor did his friends expect 
to hear from him till he informed them of his arrival 
at Swansea. 

But, when they least expected, arrived a letter dated 20 
the fourteenth day after his departure, in which he sent 
them word, that he was yet upon the road, and without 
money; and that he therefore could not proceed without 
a remittance. They then sent him the money that was 
in their hands, with which he was enabled to reach 25 
Bristol, from whence he was to go to Swansea by water. 

At Bristol he found an embargo laid upon the ship- 
ping, so that he could not immediately obtain a passage; 
and being therefore obliged to stay there some time, he 
with his usual felicity ingratiated himself with many 30 
of the principal inhabitants, was invited to their houses, 
distinguished at their public feasts, and treated with 
a regard that gratified his vanity, and therefore easily 
engaged his affection. 

He began very early after his retirement to complain 35 
of the conduct of his friends in London, and irritated 
many of them so much by his letters, that they with- 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 297 

drew, however honorably, their contributions; and it is 
believed that little more was paid him than the twenty 
pounds a year, which were allowed him by the gentle- 
man who proposed the subscription. 
5 After some stay at Bristol, he retired to Swansea, the 
place originally proposed for his residence, where he 
lived about a year, very much dissatisfied with the dimi- 
nution of his salary; but contracted, as in other places, 
acquaintance with those who were most distinguished 

10 in that country, among whom he has celebrated Mr. 
Powell and Mrs. Jones, by some verses which he inserted 
in The Gentleman's Magazine. 1 

Here he completed his tragedy, of which two acts 
were wanting when he left London; and was desirous 

15 of coming to town, to bring it upon the stage. This 
design was very warmly opposed; and he was advised, 
by his chief benefactor, to put it into the hands of Mr. 
Thomson and Mr. Mallett, that it might be fitted for 
the stage, and to allow his friends to receive the profits, 

20 out of which an annual pension should be paid him. 
This proposal he rejected with the utmost contempt. 
He was by no means convinced that the judgment of 
those, to whom he was required to submit, was superior 
to his own. He was now determined, as he expressed 

25 it, to be * no longer kept in leading-strings/ and had 
no elevated idea of ' his bounty, who proposed to pension 
him out of the profits of his own labors.' 

He attempted in Wales to promote a subscription for 
his works, and had once hopes of success; but in a short 

30 time afterwards formed a resolution of leaving that 
part of the country, to which he thought it not reasonable 
to be confined for the gratification of those who, having 
promised him a liberal income, had no sooner banished 
him to a remote corner, than they reduced his allowance 

85 to a salary scarcely equal to the necessities of life. 

His resentment of this treatment, which, in his own 
1 Printed in the late collection. 



29S SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

opinion at least, he had not deserved, was such, that he 
broke off all correspondence with most of his contribu- 
tors, and appeared to consider them as persecutors and 
oppressors; and, in the latter part of his life, declared, 
that their conduct toward him since his departure from 5 
London had ' been perfidiousness improving on perfi- 
diousness, and inhumanity on inhumanity.' 

It is not to be supposed that the necessities of Mr. 
Savage did not sometimes incite him to satirical exag- 
gerations of the behavior of those by whom he thought 10 
himself reduced to them. But it must be granted, that 
the diminution of his allowance was a great hardship, 
and that those who withdrew their subscription from a 
man who, upon the faith of their promise, had gone 
into a kind of banishment, and abandoned all those by 15 
whom he had been before relieved in his distresses, will 
find it no easy task to vindicate their conduct. 

It may be alleged, and perhaps justly, that he was 
petulant and contemptuous; that he more frequently 
reproached his subscribers for not giving him more, than 20 
thanked them for what he received; but it is to be re- 
membered, that his conduct, and this is the worst charge 
that can be • drawn up against, him, did them no real 
injury, and that it therefore ought rather to have been 
pitied than resented ; at least, the resentment it might 25 
provoke ought to have been generous and manly; epi- 
thets which his conduct will hardly deserve that starves 
the man whom he lias persuaded to put himself into his 
power. 

It might have been reasonably demanded by Savage, 30 
that they should, before they had taken away what they 
promised, have replaced him in his former state, that 
they should have taken no advantages from the situation 
to which the appearance of their kindness had reduced 
him, and that he should have been recalled to London 35 
before he was abandoned. He might justly represent, 
that he ought to haye been considered as a lion in the 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 299 

toils, and demand to be released before the dogs should 
be loosed upon him. 

He endeavored, indeed, to release himself, and, with 
an intent to return to London, went to Bristol, where a 
5 repetition of the kindness which he had formerly found 
invited him to stay. He was not only caressed and 
treated, but had a collection made for him of about thirty 
pounds, with which it had been happy if he had im- 
mediately departed for London; but his negligence did 

10 not suffer him to consider that such proofs of kindness 
were not often to be expected, and that this ardor of 
benevolence was hi a great degree the effect of novelty, 
and might, probably, be every day less; and therefore 
he took no care to improve the happy time, but was 

15 encouraged by one favor to hope for another, till at 
length generosity was exhausted, and officiousness 
wearied. 

Another part of his misconduct was the practice of 
prolonging his visits to unseasonable hours, and dis- 

20 concerting all the families into which he was admitted. 
This was an error in a place of commerce, which all 
the charms of his conversation could not compensate; 
for what trader would purchase such airy satisfaction 
by the loss of solid gain, which must be the consequence 

25 of midnight merriment, as those hours which were gained 
at night were generally lost in the morning? 

Thus Mr. Savage, after the curiosity of the inhabitants 
was gratified, found the number of his friends daily 
decreasing, perhaps without suspecting for what reason 

30 their conduct was altered ; for he still continued to 
harass, with his nocturnal intrusions, those that yet 
countenanced him, and admitted him to their houses. 

But he did not spend all the time of his residence 
at Bristol in visits or at taverns; for he sometimes re- 

35 turned to his studies, and began several considerable 
designs. When he felt an inclination to write, he always 
retired from the knowledge of his friends, and lay hid 



300 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

in an obscure part of the suburbs, till he found himself 
again desirous of company, to which it is likely that 
intervals of absence made him more welcome. 

He was always full of his design of returning to 
London, to bring his tragedy upon the stage ; but, having 5 
neglected to depart with the money that was raised for 
him, he could not afterwards procure a sum sufficient 
to defray the expenses of his journey; nor perhaps 
would a fresh supply have had any other effect than 
by putting immediate pleasures in his power, to have 10 
driven the thoughts of his journey out of his mind. 

While he was thus spending the day in contriving a 
scheme for the morrow, distress stole upon him by im- 
perceptible degrees. His conduct had already wearied 
some of those who were at first enamored of his con- 15 
versation; but he might, perhaps, still have devolved 
to others, whom he might have entertained with equal 
success, had not the decay of his clothes made it no 
longer consistent with their vanity to admit him to their 
tables, or to associate with him in public places. He 20 
now began to find every man from home at whose house 
he called; and was therefore no longer able to procure 
the necessaries of life, but wandered about the town, 
slighted and neglected, in quest of a dinner, which he 
did not always obtain. 25 

To complete his misery, he was pursued by the officers 
for small debts which he had contracted; and was there- 
fore obliged to withdraw from the small number of 
friends from whom he had still .reason to hope for favors. 
His custom was to lie in bed the greatest part of the 30 
day, and to go out in the dark with the utmost privacy, 
and after having paid his visit, return again before 
morning to his lodging, which was in the garret of an 
obscure inn. 

Being thus excluded on one hand, and confined on the 35 
other, he suffered the utmost extremities of poverty, 
and often fasted so long, that he was seized with faint- 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 301 

ness, and had lost his appetite, not being able to bear 
the smell of meat, till the action of his stomach was 
restored by a cordial. 

In this distress, he received a remittance of five pounds 
5 from London, with which he provided himself a decent 
coat, and determined to go to London, but unhappily 
spent his money at a favorite tavern. Thus was he 
again confined to Bristol, where he was every day hunted 
by bailiffs. In this exigence he once more found a 

10 friend, who sheltered him in his house, though at the 
usual inconveniencies with which his company was at- 
tended; for he could neither be persuaded to go to bed 
in the night, nor to rise in the day. 

It is observable that in these various scenes of misery 

15 he was always disengaged and cheerful: he at some 
times pursued his studies, and at others continued or 
enlarged his epistolary correspondence; nor was he ever 
so far dejected as to endeavor to procure an increase 
of his allowance by any other methods than accusations 

20 and reproaches. 

He had now no longer any hopes of assistance from 
his friends at Bristol, who as merchants, and by con- 
sequence sufficiently studious of profit, cannot be sup- 
posed to have looked with much compassion upon negli- 

25 gence and extravagance, or to think any excellence equi- 
valent to a fault of such consequence as neglect of 
economy. It is natural to imagine, that many of those 
who would have relieved his real wants, were discouraged 
from the exertion of their benevolence by observation 

30 of the use which was made of their favors, and conviction 
that relief would only be momentary, and that the same 
necessity would quickly return. 

At last he quitted the house of his friend, and re- 
turned to his lodging at the inn, still intending to set 

35 out in a few days for London ; but on the 10th of 
January, 1742-3, having been at supper with two of his 
friends, he was at his return to his lodgings arrested 



302 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

for a debt of about eight pounds, which he owed at 
a coffee-house, and conducted to the house of a sheriff's 
officer. The account which he gives of this misfortune, 
in a letter to one of the gentlemen with whom he had 
supped, is too remarkable to be omitted. 5 

' It was not a little unfortunate for me, that I spent 
yesterday's evening with you; because the hour hindered 
me from entering on my new lodging; however, I have 
now got one, but such an one as I believe nobody would 
choose. 10 

* I was arrested at the suit of Mrs. Read, just as I 
was going up stairs to bed, at Mr. Bowyer's; but taken 
in so private a manner, that I believe nobody at the 
White Lion is apprised of it; though I let the officers 
know the strength, or rather weakness, of my pocket, 15 
yet they treated^ me with the utmost civility; and even 
when they conducted me to confinement, it was in such 
a manner, that I verily believe I could have escaped, 
which I would rather be ruined than have done, not- 
withstanding the whole amount of my finances was but 20 
three-pence halfpenny. 

1 In the first place, I must insist, that you will in- 
dustriously conceal this from Mrs. S s, because I 

would not have her good-nature suffer that pain which, 
I know, she would be apt to feel on this occasion. 25 

' Next, I conjure you, dear Sir, by all the ties of 
friendship, by no means to have one uneasy thought 
on my account; but to have the same pleasantry of 
countenance, and unruffled serenity of mind, which (God 
be praised ! ) I have in this, and have had in a much 30 
severer calamity. Furthermore, I charge you, if you 
value my friendship as truly as I do yours, not to utter, 
or even harbor, the least resentment against Mrs. Read. 
I believe she has ruined me, but I freely forgive her; 
and (though I will never more have any intimacy with 35 
her) I would, at a due distance, rather do her an act 
of good, than ill will. Lastly (pardon the expression), 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 303 

I absolutely command you not to offer me any pecuniary 
assistance, nor to attempt getting me any from any one 
of your friends. At another time, or on any other occa- 
sion, you may, dear friend, be well assured, I would 
5 rather write to you in the submissive style of a request, 
than that of a peremptory command. 
. ' However, that my truly valuable friend may not 
think I am too proud to ask a favor, let me entreat 
you to let me have your boy to attend me for this 

10 day, not only for the sake of saving me the expense 
of porters, but for the delivery of some letters to 
people whose names I would not have known to 
strangers. 

1 The civil treatment I have thus far met from those 

15 whose prisoner I am, makes me thankful to the Almighty, 
that though he has thought fit to visit me (on my birth- 
night) with affliction, yet (such is his great goodness!) 
my affliction is not without alleviating circumstances. I 
murmur not; but am all resignation to the divine will. 

20 As to the world, I hope that I shall be endued by 
Heaven with that presence of mind, that serene dignity 
in misfortune, that constitutes the character of a true 
nobleman; a dignity far beyond that of coronets; a 
nobility arising from the just principles of philosophy, 

25 refined and exalted by those of Christianity.' 

He continued five days at the officer's, in hopes that 
he should be able to procure bail, and avoid the necessity 
of going to prison. The state in which he passed his 
time, and the treatment which he received, are very justly 

30 expressed by him in a letter which he wrote to a friend : 
' The whole day/ says he, i has been employed in various 
people's filling my head with their foolish chimerical 
systems, which has obliged me coolly (as far as nature 
will admit) to digest, and accommodate myself to, every 

35 different person's way of thinking ; hurried from one 
wild system to another, till it has quite made a chaos 
of my imagination, and nothing done — promised — dis- 



304 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

appointed — ordered to send, every hour, from one part 
of the town to the other/ 

When his friends, who had hitherto caressed and ap- 
plauded, found that to give bail and pay the debt was 
the same, they all refused to preserve him from a prison 5 
at the expense of eight pounds; and therefore, after 
having been for some time at the officer's house i at an 
immense expense/ as he observes in his letter, he was 
at length removed to Newgate. 

This expense he was enabled to support by the gene- 10 
rosity of Mr. Nash at Bath, who, upon receiving from 
him an account of his condition, immediately sent him 
five guineas, and promised to promote his subscription 
at Bath with all his interest. 

By his removal to Newgate, he obtained at least a 15 
freedom from suspense, and rest from the disturbing 
vicissitudes of hope and disappointment; he now found 
that his friends were only companions, who were willing 
to share his gaiety, but not to partake of his misfortunes ; 
and therefore he no longer expected any assistance from 20 
them. 

It must, however, be observed of one gentleman, that 
he offered to release him by paying the debt; but that 
Mr. Savage would not consent, I suppose, because he 
thought he had before been too burdensome to him. 25 

He was offered by some of his friends that a collection 
should be made for his enlargement ; but he ' treated the 
proposal/ and declared 1 i he should again treat it, with 
disdain. As to writing any mendicant letters he had 
too high a spirit, and determined only to write to some 30 
ministers of state, to try to regain his pension/ 

He continued to complain 2 of those that had sent him 
into the country, and objected to them, that he had ' lost 
the profits of his play, which had been finished three 
years ' ; and in another letter declares his resolution to 35 

1 In a letter after his confinement. 

2 Letter, Jan. 15. 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 305 

publish a pamphlet, that the world might know how 
1 he had been used/ 

This pamphlet was never written; for he in a very 
short time recovered his usual tranquillity, and cheer- 
5 fully applied himself to more inoffensive studies. He 
indeed steadily declared, that he was promised a yearly 
allowance of fifty pounds, and never received half the 
sum; but he seemed to resign himself to that as well 
as to other misfortunes, and lose the remembrance of 

10 it in his amusements and employments. 

The cheerfulness with which he bore his confinement 
appears from the following letter, which he wrote, Janu- 
ary the 30th, to one of his friends in London. 

1 1 now write to you from my confinement in Newgate, 

15 where I have been ever since Monday last was se'nnight, 
and where I enjoy myself with much more tranquillity 
than I have known for upwards of a twelvemonth past; 
having a room entirely to myself, and pursuing the 
amusement of my poetical studies, uninterrupted, and 

20 agreeable to my mind. I thank the Almighty, I am now 
all collected in myself; and, though my person is in 
confinement, my mind can expatiate on ample and use- 
ful subjects with all the freedom imaginable. I am now 
more conversant with the Nine than ever, and if, instead 

25 of a Newgate-bird, I may be allowed to be a bird of 
the Muses, I assure you, Sir, I sing very freely in my 
cage; sometimes indeed in the plaintive notes of the 
nightingale; but at others in the cheerful strains of the 
lark/ 

30 In another letter he observes that he ranges from 
one subject to another, without confining himself to any 
particular task; and that he was employed one week 
upon one attempt, and the next upon another. 

Surely the fortitude of this man deserves, at least, 

35 to be mentioned with applause; and, whatever faults 
may be imputed to him, the virtue of suffering well 
cannot be denied him. The two powers which, in the 



306 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

opinion of Epictetus, constituted a wise man, are those 
of bearing and forbearing*; which cannot indeed be 
affirmed to have been equally possessed by Savage; and 
indeed the want of one obliged him very frequently to 
practise the other. 5 

He was treated by Mr. Dagge, the keeper of the prison, 
with great humanity; was supported by him at his 
own table, without any certainty of recompense; had 
a room to himself, to which he- could at any time retire 
from all disturbance ; was allowed to stand at the door 10 
of the prison, and sometimes taken into the fields; 
so that he suffered fewer hardships in prison than he 
liad been accustomed to undergo in the greatest part of 
his life. 

The keeper did not confine his benevolence to a gentle 15 
execution of his office, but made some overtures to 
the creditor for his release, though without effect; and 
continued, during the whole time of his imprison- 
ment, to treat him with the utmost tenderness and 
civility. 20 

Virtue is undoubtedly most laudable in that state 
which makes it most difficult; and therefore the hu- 
manity of a gaoler certainly deserves this public attesta- 
tion; and the man whose heart has not been hardened 
by such an employment, may be justly proposed as 25 
a pattern of benevolence. If an inscription was once 
engraved, ' to the honest toll-gatherer/ less honors ought 
not to be paid ' to the tender gaoler/ 

Mr. Savage very frequently received visits, and some- 
times presents, from his acquaintances ; but they did 30 
not amount to a subsistence, for the greater part of 
which he was indebted to the generosity of this keeper; 
but these favors, however they might endear to him 
the particular persons from whom he received them, 
were very far from impressing upon his mind any ad- 35 
vantageous ideas of the people of Bristol, and therefore 
he thought he could not more properly employ himself 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 307 

in prison, than in writing a poem called London and 
Bristol delineated. 1 

When he had brought this poem to its present state, 
which, without considering the chasm, is not perfect, 
o he wrote to London an account of his design, and in- 
formed his friend, that he was determined to print it 
with his name; but enjoined him not to communicate 
his intention to his Bristol acquaintance. This gentle- 
man, surprised at his resolution, endeavored to dissuade 

10 him from publishing it, at least from prefixing his 
name; and declared, that he could not reconcile the in- 
junction of secrecy with his resolution to own it at its 
first appearance. To this Mr. Savage returned an answer 
agreeable to his character, in the following terms : 

15 1 1 received yours this morning ; and not without a 
little surprise at the contents. To answer a question 
with a question, you ask me concerning London and 
Bristol, Why will I acid delineated? Why did Mr. 
Wollaston add the same word to his Religion of Nature? 

20 1 suppose that it was his will and pleasure to add it 
in his case; and it is mine to do so in my own. You 
are pleased to tell me, that you understand not why 
secrecy is enjoined, and yet I intend to set my name to 
it. My answer is — I have my private reasons, which 

251 am not obliged to explain to any one. You doubt my 

friend ,Mr. S would not approve of it — And what 

is it to me whether he does or not? Do you imagine 

that Mr. S is to dictate to me? If any man who 

calls himself my friend should assume such an air, 

30 1 would spurn at his friendship with contempt. You 
say, I seem to think so by not letting him know it — 
And suppose I do, what then? Perhaps I can give 
reasons for that disapprobation, very foreign from what 
you would imagine. You go on in saying, Suppose I 

35 should not put my name to it — My answer is, that I 

1 The author preferred this title to that of London and 
Bristol compared; which, when he began the piece, he intended 
to prefix to it. 



308 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

will not suppose any such thing, being determined to 
the contrary: neither, Sir, would I have you suppose, 
that I applied to you for want of another press: nor 
would I have you imagine, that I owe Mr. S obliga- 
tions which I do not.' 5 

Such was his imprudence, and such his obstinate ad- 
herence to his own resolutions, however absurd! A 
prisoner! supported by charity! And, whatever insults 
he might have received during, the latter part of his stay 
in Bristol, once caressed, esteemed, and presented with 10 
a liberal collection, he could forget on a sudden his dan- 
ger and his obligations, to gratify the petulance of his 
wit, or the eagerness of his resentment, and publish 
a satire, by which he might reasonably expect that he 
should alienate those who then supported him, and pro- 15 
voke those whom he could neither resist nor escape. 

This resolution, from the execution of which it is prob- 
able that only his death could have hindered him, is 
sufficient to show how much he disregarded all con- 
siderations that opposed his present passions, and how 20 
readily he hazarded all future advantages for any im- 
mediate gratifications. Whatever was his predominant 
inclination, neither hope nor fear hindered him from 
complying with it; nor had opposition any other effect 
than to heighten his ardor, and irritate his vehemence. 25 

This performance was however laid aside, while he 
was employed in soliciting assistance from several great 
persons; and one interruption succeeding another, hin- 
dered him from supplying the chasm, and perhaps from 
retouching the other parts, which he can hardly be 30 
imagined to have finished in his own opinion; for it 
is very unequal, and some of the lines are rather in- 
serted to rhyme to others, than to support or improve 
the sense; but the first and last parts are worked up 
with great spirit and elegance. 35 

His time was spent in the prison for the most part 
in study, or in receiving visits; but sometimes he de- 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 309 

scended to lower amusements, and diverted himself in 
the kitchen with the conversation of the criminals; for 
it was not pleasing to him to be much without company; 
and, though he was very capable of a judicious choice, 
5 he was often contented with the first that offered : for 
this he was sometimes reproved by his friends, who 
found him surrounded with felons; but the reproof was 
on that, as on other occasions, thrown away; he con- 
tinued to gratify himself, and to set very little value 

10 on the opinion of others. 

But here, as in every other scene of his life, he made 
use of such opportunities as occurred of benefiting those 
who were more miserable than himself, and was always 
ready to perform any office of humanity to his fellow- 

15 prisoners. 

He had now ceased from corresponding with any of 
his subscribers except one, who yet continued to remit 
him the twenty pounds a year which he had promised 
him, and by whom it was expected that he would have 

20 been in a very short time enlarged, because he had 
directed the keeper to inquire after the state of his 
debts. 

However, he took care to enter his name according to 
the forms of the court, that the creditor might be 

25 obliged to make him some allowance, if he was con- 
tinued a prisoner, and, when on that occasion he 
appeared in the hall, was treated with very unusual 
respect. 

But the resentment of the city .was afterwards raised 

30 by some accounts that had been spread of the satire ; 
and he was informed that some of the merchants in- 
tended to pay the allowance which the law required, 
and to detain him a prisoner at their own expense. 
This he treated as an empty menace; and perhaps might 

35 have hastened the publication, only to show how much 
he was superior to their insults, had not all his schemes 
been suddenly destroyed. 



310 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

When lie had been six months in prison, he received 
from one of his friends, in whose kindness he had the 
greatest confidence, and on whose assistance he chiefly 
depended, a letter, that contained a charge of very 
atrocious ingratitude, drawn up in such terms as sudden 5 
resentment dictated. Henley, in one of his advertise- 
ments, had mentioned ' Pope's treatment of Savage/ 
This was supposed by Pope to be the consequence of 
a complaint made by Savage to Henley, and was there- 
fore mentioned by him with much resentment. Mr. 10 
Savage returned a very solemn protestation of his in- 
nocence, but however appeared much disturbed at the 
accusation. Some days afterwards he was seized with 
a pain in his back and side, which, as it was not violent, 
was not suspected to be dangerous ; but growing daily 15 
more languid and dejected, on the 25th of July he 
confined himself to his room, and a fever seized his 
spirits. The symptoms grew every day more formidable, 
but his condition did not enable him to procure any 
assistance. The last time that the keeper saw him was 20 
on July the 31st, 1743; when Savage, seeing him at 
his bedside, said, with an uncommon earnestness, i I 
have something to say to you, Sir ' ; but, after a pause, 
moved his hand in a melancholy manner; and, finding 
himself unable to recollect what he was going to com- 25 
municate, said, c 'Tis gone ! ' The keeper soon after 
left him; and the next morning he died. He was buried 
in the churchyard of St. Peter, at the expense of the 
keeper. 

Such were the life and death of Richard Savage, a 30 
man equally distinguished by his virtues and vices; 
and at once remarkable for his weaknesses and abilities. 

He was of a middle stature, of a thin habit of body, 
a long visage, coarse features, and melancholy aspect; 
of a grave and manly deportment, a solemn dignity 35 
of mien, but which, upon a nearer acquaintance, soft- 
ened into an engaging easiness of manners. His walk 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 311 

was slow, and his voice tremulous and mournful. He 
was easily excited to smiles, but very seldom provoked to 
laughter. 

His mind was in an uncommon degree vigorous and 
5 active. His judgment was accurate, his apprehension 
quick, and his memory so tenacious, that he was fre- 
quently observed to know what he had learned from 
others in a short time better than those by whom he 
was informed; and could frequently recollect incidents, 

10 with all their combination of circumstances, which few 
would have regarded at the present time, but which 
the quickness of his apprehension impressed upon him. 
He had the peculiar felicity, that his attention never 
deserted him; he was present to every object, and re- 

15 gardful of the most trifling occurrences. He had the 
art of escaping from his own reflections, and accom- 
modating himself to every new scene. 

To this quality is to be imputed the extent of his 
knowledge, compared with the small time which he 

20 spent in visible endeavors to acquire it. He -mingled 
in cursory conversation with the same steadiness of 
attention as others apply to a lecture; and, amidst the 
appearance of thoughtless gaiety, lost no new idea 
that was started, nor any hint that could be improved. 

25 He had therefore made in coffee-houses the same pro- 
ficiency as others in their closets : and it is remarkable 
that the writings of a man of little education and little 
reading have an air of learning scarcely to be found 
in any other performances, but which perhaps as often 

30 obscures as embellishes them. 

His judgment was eminently exact both with regard 
to writings and to men. The knowledge of life was 
indeed his chief attainment; and it is not without some 
satisfaction, that I can produce the suffrage of Savage 

35 in favor of human nature, of which he never appeared 
to entertain such odious ideas as some, who perhaps 
had neither his judgment nor experience, have pub- 



312 SELECTIONS FEOM JOHNSON 

lished, either in ostentation of their sagacity, vindication 
of their crimes, or gratification of their malice. 

His method of life particularly qualified him for 
conversation, of which he knew how to practise all the 
graces. He was never vehement or loud, but at once 5 
modest and easy, open and respectful; his language was 
vivacious and elegant, and equally happy upon grave 
or humorous subjects. He was generally censured for 
not knowing when to retire ; but that was not the de- 
fect of his judgment, but of his fortune : when he left 10 
his company, he was frequently to spend the remaining 
part of the night in the street, or at least was aban- 
doned to gloomy reflections, which it is not strange 
that he delayed as long as he could; and sometimes for- 
got that he gave others pain to avoid it himself. 15 

It cannot be said that he made use of his abilities 
for the direction of his own conduct: an irregular and 
dissipated manner of life had made him the slave of 
every passion that happened to be excited by the pres- 
ence of its object, and that slavery to his passions 20 
reciprocally produced a life irregular and dissipated. 
He was not master of his own motions, nor could prom- 
ise any thing for the next day. 

With regard to his economy, nothing can be added to 
the relation of his life. He appeared to think himself 25 
born to be supported by others, and dispensed from 
all necessity of providing for himself; he therefore never 
prosecuted any scheme of advantage, nor endeavored 
even to secure the profits which his writings might have 
afforded him. His temper was, in consequence of the 30 
dominion of his passions, uncertain and capricious; he 
was easily engaged and easily disgusted; but he is ac- 
cused of retaining his hatred more tenaciously than his 
benevolence. 

He was compassionate both by nature and principle, 35 
and always ready to perform offices of humanity; but , 
when he was provoked (and very small offenses were 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 313 

sufficient to provoke him), he would prosecute his re- 
venge with the utmost acrimony till his passion had 
subsided. 

His friendship was therefore of little value; for, 
5 though he was zealous in the support or vindication of 
those whom he loved, yet it was always dangerous to 
trust him, because he considered himself as discharged 
by the first quarrel from all ties of honor or gratitude; 
and would betray those secrets which, in the warmth 

10 of confidence, had been imparted to him. This practice 
drew upon him an universal accusation of ingratitude: 
nor can it be denied that he was very ready to set 
himself free from the load of an obligation; for he 
could not bear to conceive himself in a state of depend- 

15 ence, his pride being equally powerful with his other 
passions, and appearing in the form of insolence at 
one time, and of vanity at another. Vanity, the most 
innocent species of pride, was most frequently pre- 
dominant : he could not easily leave off, when he had 

20 once begun to mention himself or his works ; nor ever 

read his verses without stealing his eyes from the page, 

to discover, in the faces of his audience, how they were 

affected with any favorite passage. 

A kinder name than that of vanity ought to be given 

25 to the delicacy with which he was always careful to 
separate his own merit from every other man's and to 
reject that praise to which he had no claim. He did 
not forget, in mentioning his performances, to mark 
every line that had been suggested or amended; and 

30 was so accurate, as to relate that he owed three words 
in The Wanderer to the advice of friends. 

His veracity was questioned, but with little reason; 
his accounts, though not indeed always the same, were 
generally consistent. When he loved any man, he sup- 

35 pressed all his faults ; and, when he had been offended 
by him, concealed all his virtues; but his characters 
were generally true, so far as he proceeded; though it 



314 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

cannot be denied, that his partiality might have some- 
times the effect of falsehood. 

In cases indifferent, he was zealous for virtue, truth, 
and justice: he knew very well the necessity of good- 
ness to the present and future happiness of mankind ; 5 
nor is there perhaps any writer, who has less endeavored 
to please by flattering the appetites, or perverting the 
judgment. 

As an author, therefore (and he now ceases to in- 
fluence mankind in any other character) if one piece 10 
which he had resolved to suppress be excepted, he has 
very little to fear from the strictest moral or religious 
censure. And though he may not be altogether secure 
against the objections of the critic, it must however 
be acknowledged, that his works are the productions of 15 
a genius truly poetical; and what many writers who 
have been more lavishly applauded cannot boast, that 
they have an original air, which has no resemblance of 
any foregoing work, that the versification and senti- 
ments have a cast peculiar to themselves, which no 20 
man can imitate with success, because what was nature 
in Savage would in another be affectation. It must 
be confessed, that his descriptions are striking, his 
images animated, his fictions justly imagined, and his 
allegories artfully pursued ; that his diction is elevated, 25 
though sometimes forced, and his numbers sonorous 
and majestic, though frequently sluggish and encum- 
bered. Of his style, the general fault is harshness, and 
its general excellence is dignity; of his sentiments, the 
prevailing beauty is simplicity, and uniformity the pre- 30 
vailing defect. 

For his life, or for his writings, none who candidly 
consider his fortune will think an apology either nec- 
essary or difficult. If he was not always sufficiently 
instructed in his subject, his knowledge was at least 35 
greater than could have been attained by others in the 
same state. If his works were sometimes unfinished. 



THE LIFE OF SAVAGE 315 

accuracy cannot reasonably be exacted from a man 
oppressed with want, which he has no hope of relieving 
but by a speedy publication. The insolence and resent- 
ment of which he is accused, were not easily to be 
5 avoided by a great mind, irritated by perpetual hard- 
ships, and constrained hourly to return the spurns of 
contempt, and repress the insolence of prosperity; and 
vanity surely may be readily pardoned in him, to whom 
life afforded no other comforts than barren praises, 

10 and the consciousness of deserving them. 

Those are no proper judges of his conduct who have 
slumbered away their time on the clown of plenty; nor 
will any wise man presume to say, ' Had I been in 
Savage's condition, I should have lived or written better 

15 than Savage/ 

This relation will not be wholly without its use, if 
those, who languish under any part of his sufferings, 
shall be enabled to fortify their patience, by reflecting 
that they feel only those afflictions from which the 

20 abilities of Savage did not exempt him ; or if those 
who, in confidence of superior capacities or attainments, 
disregard the common maxims of life, shall be reminded, 
that nothing will supply the want of prudence, and that 
negligence and irregularity, long continued, will make 

25 knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius con- 
temptible. 



PREFATORY NOTE ON TEE LIFE OF ADDISON 

6 I am engaged to write little Lives, and little Prefaces, 
to a little edition of The English Poets, 9 wrote Johnson 
to Boswell in 1777. But at publication, nearly two years 
later, he said : ' I have been led beyond my intention, I 
hope, by the honest desire of giving useful pleasure ' 
'(Lives 1. xxvi). Many of the biographical prefaces re- 
mained ' little/ but of the fifty-one Lives, some fourteen 
reached a considerable length. Among these were the 
lives of Cowley, Milton, Waller, Dryden, Addison, Prior, 
Congreve, Swift, Pope (the longest), Thomson, Young, and 
Gray. 

The English Poets was published cooperatively by some 
forty London booksellers. When approached by their com- 
mittee, and requested to name his price for the work, 
Johnson asked but two hundred guineas, and to this the 
publishers afterwards added £100. ' Had he asked one 
thousand,' said Malone, ' or even fifteen hundred guineas, 
the booksellers, who knew the value of his name, would 
doubtless have readily given it. They have probably got 
five thousand guineas by this work in the course of twenty- 
five years' (Life 3. Ill, n. 1). 

Four volumes saw the light in 1779, but the remaining 
six not until 1781. ' Some time in March/ wrote John- 
son, * I finished the Lives of the Poets, which I wrote in 
my usual way, dilatorily and hastily, unwilling to work, 
and working with vigor and haste ' ( Life 4. 34 ) . 

Johnson expected to be attacked for his opinions. He 
said, * I would rather be attacked than unnoticed ' ; and 
he had his preference. Especial fault was found with the 
lives of Milton, Gray, and Littleton ; but he said : ■ Sir, I 
considered myself as intrusted with a certain portion of 
truth; I have given my opinion sincerely; let them show 
where they think me wrong' (Life 3. 65). But praise was 

316 



NOTE ON THE LIFE OF ADDISON 317 

louder than blame : ' I know not that I have written any- 
thing more generally commended than the Lives of the 
Poets.' Of all his literary work the Lives are the most 
mature, spontaneous, and vigorous, and the Life of Ad- 
dison represents these qualities perhaps the best of any, 
together with a completeness of form not attained by any 
of the others. 



Zhc Xife of a&5ieon 

Joseph Addison was born on the 1st of May, 1672, 
at Milston, of which his father, Lancelot Addison, was 
then rector, near Ambrosebury, in Wiltshire, and ap- 
pearing weak and unlikely to live, he was christened 
the same day. After the usual domestic education, 5 
which from the character of the father may be reason- 
ably supposed to have given him strong impressions of 
piety, he was committed to the care of Mr. Naish, at 
Ambrosebury, and afterwards of Mr. Taylor, at Salis- 
bury. 10 

Not to name the school or the masters of men illus- 
trious for literature, is a kind of historical fraud, by 
which honest fame is injuriously diminished : I would 
therefore trace him through the whole process of his 
education. In 1683, in the beginning of his twelfth 15 
year, his father, being made dean of Lichfield, naturally 
carried his family to his new residence, and, I believe, 
placed him for some time, probably not long, under 
Mr. Shaw, then master of the school at Lichfield, father 
of the late Dr. Peter Shaw. Of this interval his biogra- 20 
phers have given no account, and I know it only from 
a story of a barring-out, told me, when I was a boy, 
by Andrew Corbet, of Shropshire, who had heard it 
from Mr. Pigot, his uncle. 

The practice of barring-out was a savage licence, 25 
practised in many schools to the end of the last century, 
by which the boys, when the periodical vacation drew 
near, growing petulant at the approach of liberty, some 
days before the time of regular recess, took possession 
of the school, of which they barred the doors, and 30 

318 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 319 

bade their master defiance from the windows. It is 
not easy to suppose that on such occasions the master 
would do more than laugh; yet, if tradition may be 
credited, he often struggled hard to force or surprise 
5 the garrison. The master, when Pigot was a school- 
boy, was barred-out at Lichfield; and the whole opera- 
tion, as he said, was planned and conducted by 
Addison. 

To judge better of the probability of this story, I 

10 have inquired when he was sent to the Chartreux; but, 
as he was not one of those who enjoyed the Founder's 
benefaction, there is no account preserved of his ad- 
mission. At the school of the Chartreux, to which he 
was removed either from that of Salisbury or Lich- 

15 field, he pursued his juvenile studies under the care 
of Dr. Ellis, and contracted that intimacy with Sir 
Richard Steele, which their joint labors have so ef- 
fectually recorded. 

Of this memorable friendship the greater praise must 

20 be given to Steele. It is not hard to love those from 
whom nothing can be feared; and Addison never con- 
sidered Steele as a rival; but Steele lived, as he con- 
fesses, under an habitual subjection to the predomina- 
ting genius of Addison, whom he always mentioned with 

25 reverence, and treated with obsequiousness. 

Addison, who knew his own dignity, could not always 
forbear to show it, by playing a little upon his admirer; 
but he was in no danger of retort : his jests were en- 
dured without resistance or resentment. 

30 But the sneer of jocularity was not the worst. Steele, 
whose imprudence of generosity, or vanity of profusion, 
kept him always incurably necessitous, upon some press- 
ing exigence, in an evil hour, borrowed an hundred 
pounds of his friend, probably without much purpose 

35 of repayment ; but Addison, who seems to have had other 
notions of a hundred pounds, grew impatient of delay, 
and reclaimed his loan bv an execution. Steele felt 



320 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

with great sensibility the obduracy of his creditor, but 
with emotions of sorrow rather than of anger. 

In 1687 he was entered into Queen's College in Ox- 
ford, where, in 1689, the accidental perusal of some 
Latin verses gained him the patronage of Dr. Lan- 5 
caster, afterwards provost of Queen's College; by whose 
recommendation he was elected into Magdalen College 
as a demy, a term by which that society denominates 
those which are elsewhere called scholars; young men, 
who partake of the founder's benefaction, and sue- 10 
ceed in their order to vacant fellowships. 

Here he continued to cultivate poetry and criticism, 
and grew first eminent by his Latin compositions, which 
are indeed entitled to particular praise. He has not 
confined himself to the imitation of any ancient author, 15 
but has formed his style from the general language, 
such as a diligent perusal of the productions of different 
ages happened to supply. 

His Latin compositions seem to have had much of his 
fondness, for he collected a second volume of the Musce 20 
Anglicance, perhaps for a convenient receptacle, in 
which all his Latin pieces are inserted, and where his 
Poem on the Peace has the first place. He afterwards 
presented the collection to Boileau, who, from that time, 
c conceived/ says Tickell, ' an opinion of the English 25 
genius for poetry.' Nothing is better known of Boileau, 
than that he had an injudicious and peevish contempt 
of modern Latin, and therefore his profession of regard 
was probably the effect of his civility rather than ap- 
probation. 30 

Three of his Latin poems are upon subjects on which 
perhaps he would not have ventured to have written in 
his own language. The Battle of the Pigmies and 
Cranes; The Barometer; and A Bowling-green. When 
the matter is low or scanty, a dead language, in which 35 
nothing is mean because nothing is familiar, affords 
great conveniencies ; and, by the sonorous magnificence 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 321 

of Roman syllables, the writer conceals penury of 
thought and want of novelty, often from the reader, and 
often from himself. 

In his twenty-second year he first showed his power 
5 of English poetry by some verses addressed to Dry den ; 
and soon afterwards published a translation of the 
greater part of the Fourth Georgia upon Bees; after 
which, says Dryden, i my latter swarm is hardly worth 
the hiving/ 

10 About the same time he composed the arguments 
prefixed to the several books of Dryden's Virgil; and 
produced an Essay on the Georgics, juvenile, superficial, 
and uninstructive, without much either of the scholar's 
learning or the critic's penetration. 

15 His next paper of verses contained a character of 
the principal English poets, inscribed to Henry Sach- 
everell, who was then, if not a poet, a writer of verses; 
as is shown by his version of a small part of Virgil's 
Georgics, published in the Miscellanies; and a Latin 

20 encomium on Queen Mary, in the Musce Anglicance, 
These verses exhibit all the fondness of friendship; 
but, on one side or the other, friendship was afterwards 
too weak for the malignity of faction. 

In this poem is a very confident and discriminative 

25 character of Spenser, whose work he had then never 
read. So little sometimes is criticism the effect of judg- 
ment. It is necessary to inform the reader, that about 
this time he was introduced by Congreve to Montague, 
then Chancellor of the Exchequer. Addison was then 

30 learning the trade of a courtier, and subjoined Mon- 
tague, as a poetical name, to those of Cowley and of 
Dryden. 

By the influence of Mr. Montague, concurring, ac- 
cording to Tickell, with his natural modesty, he was 
1 35 diverted from his original design of entering into holy 
orders. Montague alleged the corruption of men who 
engaged in civil employments without liberal education; 



322 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

and declared, that, though he was represented as an 
enemy to the church, he would never do it any injury 
but by withholding Addison from it. 

Soon after (in 1695) he wrote a poem to King Wil- 
liam, with a rhyming introduction, addressed to Lord 5 
Somers. King William had no regard to elegance or 
literature; his study was only war; yet by a choice of 
ministers whose disposition was very different from his 
own, he procured, without intention, a very liberal pat- 
ronage to poetry. Addison was caressed both by Somers 10 
and Montague. 

In 1697 appeared his Latin verses on the Peace of 
Ryswick, which he dedicated to Montague, and which 
was afterwards called by Smith, ' the best Latin poem 
since the JEneid.' Praise must not be too rigorously 15 
examined; but the performance cannot be denied to 
be vigorous and elegant. 

Having yet no public employment, he obtained (in 
1699) a pension of three hundred pounds a year, that 
he might be enabled to travel. He staid a year at 20 
Blois, probably to learn the French language; and then 
proceeded in his journey to Italy, which he surveyed 
with the eyes of a poet. 

While he was travelling at leisure, he was far from 
being idle ; for he not only collected his observations 25 
on the country, but found time to write his Dialogues 
on Medals, and four acts of Cato. Such at least is 
the relation of Tiekell. Perhaps he only collected his 
materials, and formed his plan. 

Whatever were his other employments in Italy, he 30 
there wrote the letter to lord Halifax, which is justly 
considered as the most elegant, if not the most sublime, 
of his poetical productions. But in about two years 
he found it necessary to hasten home; being, as Swift 
informs us, distressed by indigence, and compelled to 35 
become the tutor of a travelling squire, because his pen-, 
sion was not remitted. 




Johnson in 1770. by Reynolds. He is shown without a wig, and with 
his hands raised in a characteristic gesture. This portrait expresses, 
more than any other, the pathos and tragedy of his life. The original 
or a copy was presented to his stepdaughter. Miss Porter, of Lichfield, 
whence Johnson writes in 1771 to thank Reynolds, and to say that 
it had been ' much visited and much admired. Every man has a 
lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place.' 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 323 

At his return lie published his Travels, with a dedica- 
tion to lord Somers. As his stay in foreign countries 
was short, his observations are such as might be sup- 
plied by a hasty view, and consist chiefly in comparisons 
5 of the present face of the country with the descriptions 
left us by the Roman poets, from whom he made pre- 
paratory collections, though he might have spared the 
trouble, had he known that such collections had been 
made twice before by Italian authors. 

10 The most amusing passage of his book, is his account 
of the minute republic of San Marino : of many parts 
it is not a very severe censure to say, that they might 
have been written at home. His elegance of language, 
and variegation of prose and verse, however, gain upon 

15 the reader; and the book, though a while neglected, 
became in time so much the favorite of the public, 
that before it was reprinted, it rose to five times its 
price. 

When he returned to England (in 1702), with a 

20 meanness of appearance which gave testimony of the 
difficulties to which he had been reduced, he found his 
old patrons out of power, and was therefore, for a 
time, at full leisure for the cultivation of his mind; 
and a mind so cultivated gives reason to believe that 

25 little time was lost. 

But he remained not long neglected or useless. The 
victory at Blenheim (1704) spread triumph and con- 
fidence over the nation; and lord Godolphin, lamenting 
to lord Halifax, that it had not been celebrated in a 

30 manner equal to the subject, desired him to propose it 
to some better poet. Halifax told him, that there was 
no encouragement for genius; that worthless men were 
unprofitably enriched with public money, without any 
care to find or employ those whose appearance might 

35 do honor to their country. To this Godolphin replied, 
that such abuses should in time be rectified; and that, 
if a man could be found capable of the task then pro- 



324 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

posed, he should not want an ample recompense. Hali- 
fax then named Addison; but required that the treasurer 
should apply to him in his own person. Godolphin sent 
the message by Mr. Boyle, afterwards Lord Carleton: 
and Addison, having undertaken the work, eommuni- 5 
eated it to the Treasurer, while it was yet advanced 
no farther than the simile of the Angel, and was im- 
mediately rewarded by succeeding Mr. Locke in the 
place of Commissioner of Appeals. 

In the following year he was at Hanover with Lord 10 
Halifax: and the year after was made Under-secretary 
of State, first to Sir Charles Hedges, and in a few 
months more to the Earl of Sunderland. 

About this time the prevalent taste for Italian operas 
inclined him to try Avhat would be the effect of a 15 
musical drama in our own language. He therefore wrote 
the opera of Rosamond, which, when exhibited on the 
stage, was either hissed or neglected; but trusting that 
the readers would do him more justice, he published 
it, with an inscription to the Duchess of Marlborough ; 20 
a woman without skill, or pretensions to skill, in poetry 
or literature. His dedication was therefore an in- 
stance of servile absurdity, to be exceeded only by 
Joshua Barnes's dedication of a Greek Anacreon to the 
duke. 25 

His reputation had been somewhat advanced by The 
Tender Husband, sl comedy which Steele dedicated to 
him, with a confession that he owed to him several 
of the most successful scenes. To this play Addison 
supplied a prologue. 30 

When the Marquis of Wharton was appointed Lord 
Lieutenant of Ireland, Addison attended him as his 
secretary; and was made keeper of the records in 
Birmingham's Tower, with a salary of three hundred 
pounds a year. The office was little more than nominal, 35 
and the salary was augmented for his accommoda- 
tion. 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 325 

Interest and faction allow little to the operation of 
particular dispositions, or private opinions. Two men of 
personal characters more opposite than those of Whar- 
ton and Addison could not easily be brought together. 
5 Wharton was impious, profligate, and shameless, with- 
out regard, or appearance of regard, to right and wrong : 
whatever is contrary to this may be said of Addison; 
but as agents of a party they were connected, and 
how they adjusted their other sentiments we cannot 

10 know. 

Addison must, however, not be too hastily condemned. 
It is not necessary to refuse benefits from a bad man, 
when the acceptance implies no approbation of his 
crimes; nor has the subordinate officer any obligation 

15 to examine the opinions or conduct of those under 
whom he acts, except that he rnay not be made the 
instrument of wickedness. It is reasonable to suppose 
that Addison counteracted as far as he was able, the 
malignant and blasting influence of the lieutenant; and 

20 that at least by his intervention some good was done, 
and some mischief prevented. 

When he was in office, he made a law to himself, 
as Swift has recorded, never to remit his regular fees 
in civility to his friends : i for/ said he, i I> may have 

25 a hundred friends ; and if my fee be two guineas, I 
shall, by relinquishing my right lose two hundred gui- 
neas, and no friend gain more than two; there is there- 
fore no proportion between the good imparted and 
the evil suffered/ 

30 He was in Ireland when Steele, without any com- 
munication of his design, began the publication of 
The Tatler; but he was not long concealed: by inserting 
a remark on Virgil, which Addison had given him, he 
discovered himself. It is indeed not easy for any man 

35 to write upon literature, or common life, so as not to 
make himself known to those with whom he familiarly 
converses, and who are acquainted with his track of 



326 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

study, his favorite topics, his peculiar notions, and his 
habitual phrases. 

If Steele desired to write in secret, he was not lucky; 
a single month detected him. His first Tatler was pub- 
lished April 22 (1709); and Addison's contributions 
appeared May 26. Tickell observes, that The Tatler 
began and was concluded without his concurrence. This 
is doubtless literally true; but the work did not suffer 
much by his unconsciousness of its commencement, or 
his absence at its cessation ; for he continued his as- 10 
sistance to December 23, and the paper stopped on 
January 2, 1710-11. He did not distinguish his pieces 
-by any signature; and I know not whether his name 
was not kept secret till the papers were collected into 
volumes. 15 

To The Tatler, in about two months succeeded The 
Spectator; a series of essays of the same kind, but 
written with less levity, upon a more regular plan, and 
published daily. Such an undertaking showed the writ- 
ers not to distrust their own copiousness of materials 20 
or facility of composition, and their performance justi- 
fied their confidence. They found, however, in their 
progress, many auxiliaries. To attempt a single paper 
was no terrifying labor: many pieces were offered, and 
many were received. 25 

Addison had enough of the zeal of party ; but Steele 
had at that time almost nothing else. The Spectator, in 
one of the first papers, showed the political tenets of 
its authors; but a resolution was soon taken, of courting 
general approbation by general topics, and subjects on 30 
which faction had produced no diversity of sentiments; 
such as literature, morality, and familiar life. To this 
practice they adhered with few deviations. The ardor 
of Steele once broke out in praise of Marlborough; and 
when Dr. Fleetwood prefixed to some sermons a preface, 35 
overflowing with Whiggish opinions, that it might be 
read by the queen, it was reprinted in The Spectator. 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 327 

To teach the minuter decencies and inferior duties, 
to regulate the practice of daily conversation, to correct 
those depravities which are rather ridiculous than crimi- 
nal, and remove those grievances Avhich, if they produce 
5 no lasting calamities, impress hourly vexation, was first 
attempted by Casa in his book of Manners, and Cas- 
tiglione in his Courtier; two books yet celebrated in 
Italy for purity and elegance, and which, if they are 
now less read, are neglected only because they have 

10 effected that reformation which their authors intended, 
and their precepts now are no longer wanted. Their use- 
fulness to the age in which they were written is suffi- 
ciently attested by the translations which almost all the 
nations of Europe were in haste to obtain. 

15 This species of instruction was continued, and perhaps 
advanced, by the French; among whom La Bruyere's 
Manners of the Age, though, as Boileau remarked, it is 
written without connection, certainly deserves great 
praise, for liveliness of description, and justness of 

20 observation. 

Before The Tatler and Spectator, if the writers for 
the theatre are excepted, England had no masters of 
common life. No writers had yet undertaken to reform 
either the savageness of neglect, or the impertinence of 

25 civility ; to show when to speak, or to be silent ; how to 
refuse, or how to comply. We had many books to 
teach us our more important duties, and to settle 
opinions in philosophy or politics; but an Arbiter 
elegantiarum, a judge of propriety, was yet wanting, 

30 who should survey the track of daily conversation, and 
free it from thorns and prickles, which tease the passer, 
though they do not wound him. 

For this purpose nothing is so proper as the frequent 
publication of short papers, which we read not as study 

35 but amusement. If the subject be slight, the treatise 
likewise is short. The busy may find time, and the idle 
may find patience. 



328 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

This mode of conveying cheap and easy knowledge 
began among us in the Civil War, when it was much 
the interest of either party to raise and fix the preju- 
dices of the people. At that time appeared Mercurius 
Aalicus, Mercurius Rusticus, and Mercurius Civicus. It 5 
is said, that when any title grew popular, it was stolen 
by the antagonist, who by this stratagem conveyed his 
notions to those who would not have received him, had 
he not worn the appearance of a friend. The tumult 
of those unhappy days left scarcely any man leisure 10 
to treasure up occasional compositions; and so much 
were they neglected, that a complete collection is no 
where to be found. 

These Mercuries were succeeded by L'Estrange's Ob- 
served or; and that by Lesley's Rehearsal, and perhaps 15 
by others; but hitherto nothing had been conveyed to 
the people, in this commodious manner, but contro- 
versy relating to the church or state; of which they 
taught many to talk, whom they could not teach to 
judge. 20 

It has been suggested that the Royal Society was 
instituted soon after the Restoration, to divert the at- 
tention of the people from public discontent. The Tatler 
and Spectator had the same tendency; they were pub- 
lished at a time when two parties, loud, restless, and 25 
violent, each with plausible declarations, and each per- 
haps without any distinct termination of its views, were 
agitating the nation; to minds heated with political con- 
test they supplied cooler and more inoffensive reflec- 
tions ; and it is said by Addison, in a subsequent work, 30 
that they had a perceptible influence upon the conversa- 
tion of that time, and taught the frolic and the gay 
to unite merriment with decency; an effect which they 
can never wholly lose, while they continue to be among 
the first books by which both sexes are initiated in the 35 
elegancies of knowledge. 

The Tatler and Spectator adjusted, like Casa, the un- 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 329 

settled practice of daily intercourse by propriety and 
politeness; and, like La Bruyere, exhibited the charac- 
ters and manners of the age. The personages intro- 
duced in these papers were not merely ideal; they were 
5 then known and conspicuous in various stations. Of 
The Toiler this is told by Steele in his last paper; 
and of The Spectator by Budgell, in the preface to 
Theophrastus, a book which Addison has recommended, 
and which he was suspected to have revised, if he did 

10 not write it. Of those portraits, which may be sup- 
posed to be sometimes embellished, and sometimes ag- 
gravated, the originals are now partly known, and partly 
forgotten. 

But to say that they united the plans of two or three 

15 eminent writers, is to give them but a small part of 
their due praise; they superadded literature and criti- 
cism, and sometimes towered far above their predeces- 
sors; and taught, with great justness of argument and 
dignity of language, the most important duties and sub- 

20 lime truths. 

All these topics were happily varied with elegant 
fictions and refined allegories, and illuminated with dif- 
ferent changes of style and felicities of invention. 
It is recorded by Budgell, that of the characters 

25 feigned or exhibited in The Spectator, the favorite of 
Addison was Sir Roger de Coverley, of whom he had 
formed a very delicate and discriminated idea, which 
he would not suffer to be violated; and therefore, when 
Steele had shown him innocently picking up a girl in 

80 the Temple, and taking her to a tavern, he drew upon 
himself so much of his friend's indignation, that he 
was forced to appease him by a promise of forbearing 
Sir Roger for the time to come. 

The reason which induced Cervantes to bring his hero 

85 to the grave, l para mi sola nacio Don Quixote, y yo 
para el/ made Addison declare, with an undue vehe- 
mence of expression, that he would kill Sir Roger; 



330 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

being of opinion that they were born for one another, 
and that any other hand would do him wrong. 

It may be doubted whether Addison ever filled up 
his original delineation. He describes his knight as 
having his imagination somewhat warped ; but of this 5 
perversion he has made very little use. The irregulari- 
ties in Sir Roger's conduct seem not so much the effects 
of a mind deviating from the beaten track of life, by 
the perpetual pressure of some , overwhelming idea, as 
of habitual rusticity, and that negligence which solitary 10 
grandeur naturally generates. 

The variable weather of the mind, the flying vapors 
of incipient madness, which from time to time cloud 
reason, without eclipsing it, it requires so much nicety 
to exhibit, that Addison seems to have been deterred 15 
from prosecuting his own design. 

To Sir Roger, who, as a country gentleman, appears 
to be a Tory, or, as it is gently expressed, an adherent " 
to the landed interest, is opposed Sir Andrew Freeport, 
a new man, a wealthy merchant, zealous for the monied 20 
interest, and a Whig. Of this contrariety of opinions, 
it is probable more consequences were at first intended, 
than could be produced when the resolution was taken to 
exclude party from the paper. Sir Andrew does but 
little, and that little seems not to have pleased Addison, 25 
who, when he dismissed him from the club, changed 
his opinions. Steele had made him, in the true spirit 
of unfeeling commerce, declare that he ' would not build 
an hospital for idle people ' ; but at last he buys land, 
settles in the country, and builds not a manufactory, 30 
but an hospital for twelve old husbandmen, for men 
with whom a merchant has little acquaintance, and 
whom he commonly considers with little kindness. 

Of essays thus elegant, thus instructive, and thus com- 
modiously distributed, it is natural to suppose the ap- 35 
probation general, and the sale numerous. I once heard 
it observed, that the sale may be calculated by the 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 331 

product of the tax, related in the last number to pro- 
duce more than twenty pounds a week, and therefore 
stated at one-and-twenty pounds, or three pounds ten 
shillings a day: this, at a halfpenny a paper, will give 
5 sixteen hundred and eighty for the daily number. 

This sale is not great; yet this, if Swift be credited, 
was likely to grow less; for he declares that The 
Spectator, whom he ridicules for his endless men- 
tion of the fair sex, had before his recess wearied 

10 his readers. 

The next year (1713), in which Cato came upon the 
stage, was the grand climacteric of Addison's reputa- 
tion. Upon the death of Cato, he had, as is said, 
planned a traged}' in the time of his travels, and had 

15 for several years the four first acts finished, which were 
shown to such as were likely to spread their admiration. 
They were seen by Pope, and by Cibber, who relates 
that Steele, when he took back the copy, told him, in 
the despicable cant of literary modesty, that, whatever 

20 spirit his friend had shown in the composition, he 
doubted whether he would have courage sufficient to ex- 
pose it to the censure of a British audience. 

The time however was now come, when those who 
affected to think liberty in danger affected likewise to 

25 think that a stage-play might preserve it ; and Addison 
was importuned in the name of the tutelary deities of 
Britain, to show his courage and his zeal by finishing 
his design. 

To resume his work he seemed perversely and un- 

30 accountably unwilling; and, by a request, which perhaps 
he wished to be denied, desired Mr. Hughes to add a 
fifth act. Hughes supposed him serious; and, under- 
taking the supplement, brought in a few days some 
scenes for his examination; but he had in the mean- 

35 time gone to work himself, and produced half an act, 
which he afterwards completed, but with brevity ir- 
regularly disproportionate to the foregoing parts, like 



332 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

a task performed with reluctance, and hurried to its 
conclusion. 

It may yet be doubted whether Cato was made public 
by any change of the author's purpose; for Dennis 
charged him with raising prejudices in his own favor 5 
by false positions of preparatory criticism, and with 
'poisoning the town ' by contradicting in The Spectator 
the established rule of poetical justice, because his own 
hero, with all his virtues, was to fall before a tyrant. 
The fact is certain; the motives Ave must guess. 10 

Addison, was, I believe, sufficiently disposed to bar 
all avenues against all danger. When Pope brought 
him the prologue, which is properly accommodated to 
the play, there were these words, ' Britons, arise, be 
worth like this approved ' ; meaning nothing more than, 15 
Britons, erect and exalt yourselves to the approbation 
of public virtue. Addison was frighted lest he should 
be thought a promoter of insurrection, and the line was 
liquidated to i Britons, attend.' 

Now ' heavily in clouds came on the day, the great, 20 
the important day/ when Addison was to stand the 
hazard of the theatre. That there might, however, be 
left as little to hazard as was possible, on the first night 
Steele, as himself relates, undertook to pack an audi- 
ence. This, says Pope, had been tried for the first 25 
time in favor of The Distressed Mother; and was now, 
with more efficacy, practised for Cato. 

The danger was soon over. The whole nation was 
at that time on fire with faction. The Whigs applauded 
every line in which liberty was mentioned, as a satire 30 
on the Tories; and the Tories echoed every clap, to 
show that the satire was unfelt. The story of Boling- 
broke is well known. He called Booth to his box, and 
gave him fifty guineas for defending the cause of lib- 
erty so well against a perpetual dictator. The Whigs, 35 
says Pope, design a second present, when they can 
accompany it with as good a sentence. 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 333 

The play, supported thus by the emulation of factious 
praise, was acted night after night for a longer time 
than, I believe, the public had allowed to any drama 
before; and the author, as Mrs. Porter long after- 
Swards related, wandered through the whole exhibition 
behind the scenes with restless and unappeasable 
solicitude. 

When it was printed, notice was given that the queen 
would be pleased if it was dedicated to her; '-but, as 

10 he had designed that compliment elsewhere, he found 
himself obliged/ says Tickell, i by his duty on the one 
hand, and his honor on the other, to send it into the 
world without any dedication/ 

Human happiness has always its abatements; the 

15 brightest sunshine of success is not without a cloud. 
No sooner was Cato offered to the reader, than it was 
attacked by the acute malignity of Dennis, with all the 
violence of angry criticism. Dennis, though equally 
zealous, and probably by his temper more furious than 

20 Addison, for what they called liberty, and though a 
flatterer of the Whig ministry, could not sit quiet at 
a successful play; but was eager to tell friends and 
enemies? that they had misplaced their admirations. The 
world was too stubborn for instruction; with the fate 

25 of the censurer of Corneille's Cid, his animadversions 
showed his anger without effect, and Cato continued to 
be praised. 

Pope had now an opportunity of courting the friend- 
ship of Addison, by vilifying his old enemy, and could 

30 give resentment its full play without appearing to 
revenge himself. He therefore published A Narrative of 
the Madness of John Dennis : a performance which 
left the objections to the play in their full force, and 
therefore discovered more desire of vexing the critic 

35 than of defending the poet. 

Addison, who was no stranger to the world, probably 
saw the selfishness of Pope's friendship; and, resolving 



334 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

that he should have the consequences of his officiousness 
to himself, informed Dennis by Steele, that he was sorry 
for the insult; and that, whenever he should think fit 
to answer his remarks, he would do it in a manner 
to which nothing could be objected. 5 

The greatest weakness of the play is in the scenes 
of love, which are said by Pope to have been added 
to the original plan upon a subsequent review, in com- 
pliance with the popular practice of the stage. Such 
an authority it is hard to reject; yet the love is so 10 
intimately mingled with the whole action, that it can- 
not easily be thought extrinsic and adventitious ; for, 
if it were taken away, what would be left? Or how 
were the four acts filled in the first draught ? 

At the publication the wits seemed proud to pay 15 
their attendance with encomiastic verses. The best are 
from an unknown hand, which will perhaps lose some- 
what of their praise when the author is known to be 
Jeffreys. 

Cato had yet other honors. It was censured as a 20 
party-play by 'A Scholar of Oxford'; and defended in 
a favorable examination by Dr. Seweli. It was trans- 
lated by Salvini into Italian, and acted at Florence; 
and by the Jesuits of St. Omer's into Latin, and played 
by their pupils. Of this version a copy was sent to 25 
Mr. Addison : it is to be wished that it could be found, 
for the sake of comparing their version of the soliloquy 
with that of Bland. 

A tragedy was written on the same subject by Des 
Champs, a French poet, which was translated with a 30 
criticism on the English play. But the translator and 
the critic are now forgotten. 

Dennis lived on unanswered, and therefore little read. 
Addison knew the policy of literature too well to make 
his enemy important by drawing the attention of the 35 
public upon a criticism, which, though sometimes in- 
temperate, was often irrefragable. 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 335 

While Cato was upon the stage, another daily paper 
called The Guardian, was published by Steele. To this 
Addison gave great assistance, whether occasionally or 
by previous engagement is not known. 
5 The character of Guardian was too narrow and too 
serious : it might properly enough admit both the duties 
and the decencies of life, but seemed not to include 
literary speculations, and was in some degree violated 
by merriment and burlesque. "What had the Guardian 

10 of the Lizards to do with clubs of tall or of little men, 
with nests of ants, or with Strada's prolusions? 

Of this paper nothing is necessary to be said, but 
that it found many contributors, and that it was a 
continuation of The Spectator, with the same elegance, 

15 and the same variety, till some unlucky sparkle from a 
Tory paper set Steele's politics on fire, and wit at once 
blazed into faction. He was soon too hot for neutral 
topics, and quitted The Guardian to write The English- 
man. 

20 The papers of Addison are marked in The Spectator 
by one of the letters in the name of Clio, and in The 
Guardian by a hand; whether it was, as Tiekell pre- 
tends to think, that he was unwilling to usurp the praise 
of others, or, as Steele, with far greater likelihood, 

25 insinuates, that he could not without discontent impart 
to others any of his own. I have heard that his avidity 
did not satisfy itself with the air of renown, but that 
with great eagerness he laid hold on his proportion of 
the profits. 

30 Many of these papers were written with powers truly 
comic, with nice discrimination of characters, and ac- 
curate observation of natural or accidental deviations 
from propriety; but it was not supposed that he had 
tried a comedy on the stage, till Steele, after his death, 

35 declared him the author of The Drummer. This, how- 
ever, Steele did not know to be true by any direct 
testimony; for, when Addison put the play into his 



336 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

hands, he only told him, it was the work of a ' gentle- 
man in the company ' ; and when it was received, as 
is confessed, with cold disapprobation, he was probably 
less willing to claim it. Tickell omitted it in his col- 
lection ; but the testimony of Steele, and the total silence 5 
of any other cl*»*** ant, has determined the public to 
assign it to } on, and it is now printed with his 
other poetry. '- ^ele carried The Drummer to the play- 
house, and afterwards to the press, and sold the copy 
for fifty guineas. 10 

To the opinion of Steele may be added the proof sup- 
plied by the play itself, of which the characters are 
such as Addison would have delineated, and the tend- 
ency such as Addison would have promoted. That it 
should have been ill-received would raise wonder, did 15 
we not daily see the capricious distribution of theatrical 
praise. 

He was not all this time an indifferent spectator of 
public affairs. He wrote, as different exigencies required 
(in 1707), The present State of the War, and the 20 
Necessity of an Augmentation; which, however judi- 
cious, being written on temporary topics, and exhibiting 
no peculiar powers, laid hold on no attention, and has 
naturally sunk by its own weight into neglect. This 
cannot be said of the few papers entitled The Whig 25 
Examiner, in which is employed all the force of gay 
malevolence and humorous satire. Of this paper, which 
just appeared and expired, Swift remarks, with exulta- 
tion, l that it is now down among the dead men.' He 
might well rejoice at the death of that which he could 30 
not have killed. Every reader of every party, since 
personal malice is past, and the papers which once in- 
flamed the nation are read only as effusions of wit, 
must wish for more of the Whig Examiners; for on 
no occasion was the genius of Addison more vigorously 35 
exerted, and on none did the superiority of his powers 
more evidently appear. His Trial of Count Tariff, writ- 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 337 

ten to expose the treaty of commerce with France, 
lived no longer than the question that produced it. 

Not long afterwards, an attempt was made to revive 
The Spectator, at a time indeed by no means favorable 
5 to literature, when the succession of a new family to 
the throne filled the nation with gixiety, discord, and 
confusion; and either the turbulenc * the times, or 
the satiety of the readers, put a stop ^ publication, 

after an experiment of eighty numbers, which were 

10 afterwards collected into an eighth volume, perhaps 
more valuable than any one of those that went before it. 
Addison produced more than a fourth part; and the 
other contributors are by no means unworthy of ap- 
pearing as his associates. The time that had passed 

15 during the suspension of The Spectator, though it had 
not lessened his power of humor, seems to have in- 
creased his disposition to seriousness: the proportion 
of his religious to his comic papers is greater than in 
the former series. 

20 The Spectator, from its re-commencement, was pub- 
lished only three times a week; and no discriminative 
marks were added to the papers. To Addison Tickell 
has ascribed twenty- three. 

The Spectator had many contributors; and Steele, 

25 whose negligence kept him always in a hurry, when it 
was his turn to furnish a paper, called loudly for the 
Letters, of which Addison, whose materials were more, 
made little use; having recourse to sketches and hints, 
the product of his former studies, which he now re- 

80 viewed and completed : among these are named by Tick- 
ell the Essays on Wit, those on the Pleasures of the 
Imagination, and the Criticism on Milton. 

When the House of Hanover took possession of the 
throne it was reasonable to expect that the zeal of 

35 Addison would be suitably rewarded. Before the ar- 
rival of King George, he was made secretary to the 
regency, and was required by his office to send notice 



338 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

to Hanover that the queen was dead, and that the 
throne was vacant. To do this would not have been 
difficult to any man but Addison, who was so over- 
whelmed with the greatness of the event, and so dis- 
tracted by choice of expression, that the lords, who 5 
could not wait for the niceties of criticism, called Mr. 
Southwell, a clerk in the house, and ordered him to 
dispatch the message. Southwell readily told what was 
necessary in the common style of business, and valued 
himself upon having done what was too hard for Addi- 10 
son. 

He was better qualified for The Freeholder, a paper 
_ which he published twice a week, from Dec. 23, 1715, 
to the middle of the next year. This was undertaken 
in defense of the established government, sometimes 15 
with argument, and sometimes with mirth. In argu- 
ment he had many equals; but his humor was singular 
and matchless. Bigotry itself must be delighted with 
the Tory Foxhunter. 

There are however some strokes less elegant, and less 20 
decent; such as the Pretender's Journal, in which one 
topic of ridicule is his poverty. This mode of abuse 
had been employed by Milton against King Charles II. 

Jacoboei 

Centum, exulantis viscera Marsupii regis. 25 

And Oldmixon delights to tell of some alderman of 
London, that he had more money than the exiled princes ; 
but that which might be expected from Milton's savage- 
ness, or Oldmixon's meanness, was not suitable to the 
delicacy of Addison. 30 

Steele thought the humor of The Freeholder too nice 
and gentle for such noisy times; and is reported to have 
said that the ministry made use of a lute, when they 
should have called for a trumpet. 

This year (1716) he married the Countess-dowager 35 
of Warwick, whom he had solicited by a very long and 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 339 

anxious courtship, perhaps with behavior not very un- 
like that of Sir Roger to his disdainful widow; and 
who, I am afraid, diverted herself often by playing with 
his passion. He is said to have first known her by 
5 becoming tutor to her son. i He formed/ said Tonson, 
k the design of getting that lady from the time when 
he was first recommended into the family/ In what 
part of his life he obtained the recommendation, or 
how long, and in what manner, he lived in the family, 

10 1 know not. His advances at first were certainly timor- 
ous, but grew bolder as his reputation and influence 
increased; till at last the lady was persuaded to marry 
him, on terms much like those on which a Turkish 
princess is espoused, to whom the sultan is reported to 

15 pronounce, ' Daughter, I give thee this man for thy 
slave.' The marriage, if uncontradicted report can be 
credited, made no addition to his happiness; it neither 
found them nor made them equal. She always remem- 
bered her own rank, and thought herself entitled to 

20 treat with very little ceremony the tutor of her son. 
Rowe's ballad of The Despairing Shepherd is said to 
have been written, either before or after marriage, 
upon this memorable pair; and it is certain that Addi- 
son has left behind him no encouragement for ambitious 

25 love. 

The year after (1717) he rose to his highest eleva- 
tion, being made Secretary of State. For this employ- 
ment he might be justly supposed qualified by long 
practice of business, and by his regular ascent through 

30 other offices; but expectation is often disappointed; 
it is universally confessed that he was unequal to the 
duties of his place. In the House of Commons he could 
not speak, and therefore Avas useless to the defense 
of the government. In the office, says Pope, he could 

35 not issue an order without losing his time in quest of 
fine expressions. "What he gained in rank he lost in 
credit; and, finding by experience his own inability, 



340 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

was forced to solicit his dismission, with a pension of 
fifteen hundred pounds a year. His friends palliated 
this relinquishment, of which both friends and enemies 
knew the true reason, with an account of declining 
health, and the necessity of recess and quiet. 5 

He now returned to his vocation, and began to plan 
literary occupations for his future life. He purposed 
a tragedy on the death of Socrates; a story of which, 
as Tickell remarks, the basis is narrow, and to which 
I know not how love could have been appended. There 10 
would however have been no want either of virtue in 
the sentiments, or elegance in the language. 

He engaged in a nobler work, a Defense of the 
Christian Religion, of which part was published after 
his death ; and he designed to have made a new poetical 15 
version of the Psalms. 

These pious compositions Pope imputed to a selfish 
motive, upon the credit, as he owns, of Tonson, who 
having quarrelled with Addison, and not loving him, 
said, that when he laid down the secretary's office, he 20 
intended to take orders, and obtain a bishopric ; i for/ 
said he, i I always thought him a priest in his heart/ 

That Pope should have thought this conjecture of 
Tonson worth remembrance, is a proof, .but indeed, so 
far as I have found, the only proof, that he retained 25 
some malignity from their ancient rivalry. Tonson 
pretended but to guess it; no other mortal ever sus- 
pected it; and Pope might have reflected, that a man, 
who had been Secretary of State in the ministry of 
Sunderland, knew a nearer way to a bishopric than 30 
by defending religion, or translating the Psalms. 

It is related, that he had once a design to make an 
English Dictionary, and that he considered Dr. Tillot- 
son as the writer of highest authority. There was 
formerly sent to me by Mr. Locker, clerk of the Leather- 35 
sellers' company, who was eminent for curiosity and 
literature, a collection of examples selected from Tillot- 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 341 

son's works, as Locker said, by Addison. It came too 
late to be of use, so I inspected it but slightly, and 

remember it indistinctly. I thought the passages too 
short. 
5 Addison, however, did not conclude his life in peace- 
ful studies; but relapsed, when he was near his end, 
to a political dispute. 

It so happened that (1718-19) a controversy was 
agitated with great vehemence between those friends 

10 of long continuance. Addison and Steele. It may be 
asked, in the language of Homer, what power or what 
cause could set them at variance. The subject of their 
dispute was of great importance. The Earl of Sunder- 
land proposed an act called The Peerage Bill, by which 

15 the number of peers should be fixed, and the king 
restrained from any new creation of nobility, unless 
when an old family should be extinct. To this the 
lords would naturally agree : and the king, who was 
yet little acquainted with his own prerogative, and, as 

20 is now well known, almost indifferent to the possessions 
of the crown, had been persuaded to consent. The 
only difficulty was found among the commons, who 
were not likely to approve the perpetual exclusion of 
themselves and their posterity. The bill therefore was 

25 eagerly opposed, and among others by Sir Robert Wal- 
pole, whose speech was published. 

The lords might think their dignity diminished by 
improper advancements, and particularly by the intro- 
duction of twelve new peers at once, to produce a 

30 ma jority of Tories in the last reign: an act of authority 
violent enough, yet certainly legal, and by no means 
to be compared with that contempt of national right 
with which, some time afterwards, by the instigation 
of TVhiggism, the commons, chosen by the people for 
|35 three years, chose themselves for seven. But. whatever 
might be the disposition of the Lords, the people had 
no wish to increase their power. The tendency of the 



342 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

bill, as Steele observed in a letter to the Earl of Oxford, 
was to introduce an aristocracy; for a majority in the 
House of Lords, so limited, would have been despotic 
and irresistible. 

To prevent this subversion of the ancient establish- 5 
ment, Steele, whose pen readily seconded his political 
passions, endeavored to alarm the nation by a pamphlet 
called The Plebeian. To this an answer was published 
by Addison, under the title of The Old Whig, in which 
it is not discovered that Steele was then known to be 10 
the advocate for the commons. Steele replied by a 
second Plebeian; and, whether by ignorance or by court- 
esy, confined himself to his question, without any per- 
sonal notice of his opponent. Nothing hitherto was 
committed against the laws of friendship, or proprieties 15 
of decency; but controvertists cannot long retain their 
kindness for each other. The Old Whig answered The 
Plebeian, and could not forbear some contempt of • little 
Dicky, whose trade it was to write pamphlets/ Dicky, 
however, did not lose his settled veneration for his 20 
friend; but contented himself with quoting some lines 
of Cato, which were at once detection and reproof. The 
bill was laid aside during that session; and Addison 
died before the next, in which its commitment was re- 
jected by two hundred and sixty-five to one hundred 25 
and seventy-seven. 

Every reader surely must regret that these two illus- 
tripus friends, after so many years past in confidence, 
and endearment, in unity of interest, conformity of 
opinion, and fellowship of study, should finally part 30 
in acrimonious opposition. Such a controversy was 
' Bellum plusquam civile/ as Lucan expresses it. Why 
could not faction find other advocates? But, among 
the uncertainties of the human state, we are doomed to 
number the instability of friendship. 35 

Of this dispute I have little knowledge but from the. 
Biographia Britannica. The Old Whig is not inserted 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 343 

in Addison's works; nor is it mentioned by Tickell in 
his Life; why it was omitted, the biographers doubtless 
give the true reason : the fact was too recent, and those 
who had been heated in the contention were not yet 
5 cool. 

The necessity of complying with times, and of spar- 
ing persons, is the great impediment of biography. 
History may be formed from permanent monuments 
and records; but lives can only be written from per- 

lOsonal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and 
in a short time is lost for ever. What is known can 
seldom be immediately told; and when it might be told, 
it is no longer known. The delicate features of the 
mind, the nice discriminations of character, and the 

15 minute peculiarities of conduct, are soon obliterated; 
and it is surely better that caprice, obstinacy, frolic, 
and folly, however they might delight in the description, 
should be silently forgotten, than that, by wanton merri- 
ment and unseasonable detection, a pang should be 

20 given to a widow, a daughter, a brother, or a friend. 
As the process of these narratives is now bringing me 
among my contemporaries, I begin to feel myself ' walk- 
ing upon ashes under which the fire is not extinguished/ 
and coming to the time of which it will be proper 

25 rather to say ' nothing that is false, than all that is 
true.' 

The end of this useful life was now approaching. — 
Addison had for some time been oppressed by shortness 
of breath, which was now aggravated by a dropsy; 

30 and, finding his danger pressing, he prepared to die 
conformably to his own precepts and professions. 

During this lingering decay, he sent, as Pope relates, 
a message by the Earl of Warwick to Mr. Gay, desiring 
to see him. Gay, who had not visited him for some 

35 time before, obeyed the summons, and found himself 
received with great kindness. The purpose for which 
the interview had been solicited was then discovered. 



344 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

Addison told him, that he had injured him; but that, 
if he recovered, he would recompense him. What the 
injury was he did not explain, nor did Gay ever know, 
but supposed that some preferment designed for him, 
had, by Addison's intervention, been withheld. 5 

Lord Warwick was a young man of very irregular 
life, and perhaps of loose opinions. Addison, for whom 
he did not want respect, had very diligently endeavored 
to reclaim him; but his arguments and expostulations 
had no effect. One experiment, however, remained to 10 
be tried : when he found his life near its end, he directed 
the young lord to be called ; and when he desired, with 
"great tenderness, to hear his last injunctions, told him, 
1 1 have sent for you, that you may see how a Christian 
can die.' What effect this awful scene had on the 15 
earl, I know not: he likewise died himself in a short 
time. 

In TickelFs excellent elegy on his friend are these 
lines : 

He taught us how to live; and, oh! too high 20 

The price of knowledge, taught us how to die. — 

In which he alludes, as he told Dr. Young, to this moving 
interview. 

Having given directions to Mr. Tickell for the pub- 
lication of his works, and dedicated them on his death- 25 
bed to his friend Mr. Craggs, he died June 17, 1719, 
at Holland-house, leaving no child but a daughter. 

Of his virtue it is a sufficient testimony, that the 
resentment of party has transmitted no charge of any 
crime. He was not one of those who are praised only 30 
after death; for his merit was so generally acknow- 
ledged, that Swift, having observed that his election 
passed without a contest, adds, that, if he had proposed 
himself for king, he would hardly have been refused. 

His zeal for his party did not extinguish his kindness 35 
for the merit of his opponents: when he was secretary 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 345 

Ireland, he refused to intermit his acquaintance with 
Swift. 

Of his habits, or external manners, nothing is so often 
mentioned as that timorous or sullen taciturnity, which 
5 his friends called modesty by too mild a name. Steele 
mentions with great tenderness i that remarkable bash- 
fulness, which is a cloak that hides and muffles merit y ; 
and tells us, i that his abilities were covered only by 
modesty, which doubles the beauties which are seen, 

10 and gives credit and esteem to all that are concealed/ 
Chesterfield affirms, that i Addison was the most timorous 
and awkward man that he ever saw.' And Addison, 
speaking of his own deficience in conversation, used to 
say of himself, that, with respect to intellectual wealth, 

15 ' he could draw bills for a thousand pounds, though 
he had not a guinea in his pocket.' 

That he wanted current coin for ready payment, and 
by that want was often obstructed and distressed; that 
he was oppressed by an improper and ungraceful timid- 

20 ity ; every testimony concurs to prove ; but Chesterfield's 
representation is doubtless hyperbolical. That man can- 
not be supposed very unexpert in the arts of conversa- 
tion and practice of life, who, without fortune or al- 
liance, by his usefulness and dexterity, became Secre- 

25 tary of State ; and who died at forty-seven, after having 
not only stood long in the highest rank of wit and 
literature, but filled one of the most important offices 
of state. 

The time in which he lived had reason to lament his 

30 obstinacy of silence : l for he was/ says Steele, ' above 
all men in that talent called humor, and enjoyed it 
in such perfection, that I have often reflected, after 
a night spent with him apart from all the world, that 
I had had the pleasure of conversing with an intimate 

35 acquaintance of Terence and Catullus, who had all their 
wit and nature heightened with humor more exquisite 
and delightful than any other man ever possessed/ 



346 SELECTIONS FEOM JOHNSON 

This is the fondness of a friend; let us hear what is 
told us by a rival : i Addison's conversation/ says Pope, 
1 had something in it more charming that I have found 
in any other man. But this was only when familiar: 
before strangers, or perhaps a single stranger, he pre- 5 
served his dignity by a stiff silence.' 

This modesty was by no means inconsistent with a 
very high opinion of his own merit. He demanded to 
be the first name in modern wit; and, with Steele to 
echo him, used to depreciate Dryclen, whom Pope and 10 
Congreve defended against them. There is no reason 
to doubt that he suffered too much pain from the 
/prevalence of Pope's poetical reputation; nor is it with- 
out strong reason suspected, that by some disingenuous 
acts he endeavored to obstruct it ; Pope was not the 15 
only man whom he insidiously injured, though the only 
man of whom he could be afraid. 

His own powers were such as might have satisfied 
him with conscious excellence. Of very extensive learn- 
ing he has indeed given no proofs. He seems to have 20 
had small acquaintance with the sciences, and to have 
read little except Latin and French; but of the Latin 
poets his Dialogues on Medals show that he had perused 
the works with great diligence and skill. The abun- 
dance of his own mind left him little need of adven- 25 
titious sentiments; his wit always could suggest what 
the occasion demanded. He had read with critical eyes 
the important volume of human life, and knew the heart 
of man from the depths of stratagem to the surface of 
affectation. 30 

What he knew he could easily communicate. * This/ 
says Steele, l was particular in this writer, that, when 
he had taken his resolution, or made his plan for what 
he designed to write, he would walk about a room, and 
dictate it into language with as much freedom and ease 35 
as any one could write it down, and attend to the CO' 
herence and grammar of what he dictated.' 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 347 

Pope, who can be less suspected of favoring his 
memory, declares that he wrote very fluently, but was 
slow and scrupulous in correcting; that many of his 
Spectators were written very fast, and sent immediately 
5 to the press; and that it seemed to be for his advantage 
not to have time for much revisal. 

i He would alter/ says Pope, ' any thing to please his 
friends, before publication; but would not retouch his 
pieces afterwards : and I believe not one word in Cato 
10 to which I made an objection was suffered to stand/ 

The last line of Cato is Pope's, having been originally 
written 

And, oh! ''twas this that ended Cato's life. 

Pope might have made more objections to the six 

15 concluding lines. In the first couplet the words ' f rom 
hence' are improper; and the second line is taken from 
Dry den's Virgil. Of the next couplet, the first verse 
being included in the second, is therefore useless; and 
in the third, Discord is made to produce Strife. 

20 Of the course of Addison's familiar clay, 1 before his 
marriage, Pope has given a detail. He had in the house 
with him Budgell, and perhaps Philips. His chief com- 
panions were Steele, Budgell, Philips, Carey, Davenant, 
and Colonel Brett. With one or other of these he 

25 always breakfasted. He studied all morning, then dined 
at a tavern ; and went afterwards to Button's. 

Button had been a servant in the Countess of War- 
wick's family; who, under the patronage of Addison, 
kept a coffee-house on the south side of Russel-street, 

30 about two doors from Covent-garden. Here it was that 
the wits of that time used to assemble. It is said that 
when Addison had suffered any vexation from the count- 
ess, he withdrew the company from Button's house. 
From the coffee-house he went again to a tavern, 

35 where he often sat late, and drank too much wine. In 
the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for 
1 Spence. 



348 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

courage, and bashfulness for confidence. It is not un- 
likely that Addison was first seduced to excess by the 
manumission which he obtained from the servile timidity 
of his sober hours. He that feels oppression from the 
presence of those to whom he knows himself superior, 5 
will desire to set loose his powers of conversation; and 
who that ever asked succors from Bacchus was able 
to preserve himself from being enslaved by his auxiliary ? 

Among those friends it was that Addison displayed 
the elegance of his colloquial accomplishments, which 10 
may easily be supposed such as Pope represents them. 
The remark of Mandeville, who, when he had passed 
an evening in his company, declared that he was a 
parson in a tye-wig, can detract little from his char- 
acter; he was always reserved to strangers, and was 15 
not incited to uncommon freedom by a character like 
that of Mandeville. 

From any minute knowledge of his familiar manners, 
the intervention of sixty years has now debarred us. 
Steele once promised Congreve and the public a com- 20 
plete description of his character; but the promises of 
authors are like the vows of lovers. Steele thought no 
more on his design, or thought on it with anxiety that 
at last disgusted him, and left his friend in the hands 
of Tickell. 25 

One slight lineament of his character Swift has pre- 
served. It was his practice, when he found any man 
invincibly wrong, to flatter his opinions by acquiescence, 
and sink him yet deeper in absurdity. This artifice of 
mischief was admired by Stella ; and Swift seems to 30 
approve her admiration. 

His works will supply some information. It appears 
from his various pictures of the world, that, with all 
his bashfulness, he had conversed with many distinct 
classes of men, had surveyed their ways with very dili- 35 
gent observation, and marked with great acuteness the 
effects of different modes of life. He was a man in 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 349 

whose presence nothing reprehensible was out of clanger; 
quick in discerning whatever was wrong or ridiculous, 
and not unwilling to expose it. ' There are/ says Steele, 
1 in his writings many oblique strokes upon some of 
5 the wittiest men of the age.' His delight was more to 
excite merriment than detestation; and he detects follies 
rather than crimes. 

If any judgment be made, from his books, of his moral 
character, nothing will be found but purity and ex- 

10 cellence. Knowledge of mankind, indeed, less extensive 
than that of Addison, will show, that to write, and 
to live, are very different. Many who praise virtue, 
do no more than praise it. Yet it is reasonable to 
believe that Addison's professions and practice were 

15 at no great variance, since, amidst that storm of faction 
in which most of his life was passed, though his station 
made him conspicuous, and his activity made him for- 
midable, the character given him by his friends was 
never contradicted by his enemies : of those with whom 

20 interest or opinion united him he had not only the 
esteem, but the kindness; and of others whom the 
violence of opposition drove against him, though he 
might lose the love, he retained the reverence. 

It is justly observed by Tickell, that he employed wit 

25 on the side of virtue and religion. He not only made 
the proper use of wit himself, but taught it to others; 
and from his time it has been generally subservient to 
the cause of reason and of truth. He has dissipated 
the prejudice that had long connected gaiet\ T with vice, 

30 and easiness of manners with laxity of principles. He 
has restored virtue to its dignity, and taught innocence 
not to be ashamed. This is an elevation of literary 
character, i above all Greek, above all Roman fame.' 
No greater felicity can genius attain, than that of hav- 

35 ing purified intellectual pleasure, separated mirth from 
indecency, and wit from licentiousness; of having taught 
a succession of writers to bring elegance and gaiety to 



350 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

the aid of goodness; and, if I may use expressions yet 
more awful, of having ' turned many to righteousness. 7 

Addison, in his life, and for some time afterwards, 
was considered by the greater part of readers as su- 
premely excelling both in poetry and criticism. Part 5 
of his reputation may be probably ascribed to the ad- 
vancement of his fortune: when, as Swift observes, he 
became a statesman, and saw poets waiting at his levee, 
it is no wonder that praise was accumulated upon him. 
Much likewise may be more honorably ascribed to his 10 
personal character: he who, if he had claimed it, might 
have obtained the diadem, was not likely to be denied 
the laurel. 

But time quickly puts an end to artificial and acci- 
dental fame ; and Addison is to pass through futurity 15 
protected only by his genius. Every name which kind- 
ness or interest once raised too high, is in danger, lest 
the next age should, by the vengeance of criticism, 
sink it in the same proportion. A great writer has 
lately styled him { an indifferent poet, and a worse 20 
critic/ 

His poetry is first to be considered; of which it must 
be confessed that it has not often those felicities of 
diction which give lustre to sentiments, or that vigor 
of sentiment that animates diction : there is little of 25 
ardor, vehemence, or transport; there is very rarely the 
awfulness of grandeur, and not very often the splendor 
of elegance. He thinks justly; but he thinks faintly. 
This is his general character; to which, doubtless, many 
single passages will furnish exceptions. 30 

Yet, if he seldom reaches supreme excellence, he rarely 
sinks into dullness, and is still more rarely entangled in 
absurdity. He did not trust his powers enough to be 
negligent. There is in most of his compositions a calm- 
ness and equability, deliberate and cautious, sometimes 35 
with little that delights, but seldom with any thing that 
offends. 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 351 

Of this kind seem to be his poems to Dryden, to 
Somers, and to the king. His Ode on St. Cecilia has 
been imitated by Pope, and has something in it of 
Dryden's vigor. Of his account of the English Poets, 
5 he used to speak as a ' poor thing ' ; but it is not worse 
than his usual strain. He has said, not very judiciously, 
in his character of Waller, 

Thy verse could show ev'n Cromwell's innocence, 
And compliment the storms that bore him hence. 
10 O! had thy Muse not come an age too soon, 

But seen great Nassau on the British throne. 
How had his triumph glitter'd in thy page! 

What is this but to say, that he who could compliment 
Cromwell had been the proper poet for King William? 

15 Addison, however, never printed the piece. 

The Letter from Italy has been always praised, but 
has never been praised beyond its merit. It is more 
correct, with less appearance of labor, and more elegant, 
with less ambition of ornament, than any other of his 

20 poems. There is, however, one broken metaphor, of 
which notice may properly be taken: 

Fir'd with that name — 
I bridle in my struggling Muse with pain, 
That longs to launch into a nobler strain. 

25 To bridle a goddess is no very delicate idea; but why 
must she be bridled? because she longs to launch; an 
act which was never hindered by a bridle', and whither 
will she launch? into & nobler strain. She is hi the 
first line a horse, in the second a boat; and the care 

30 of the poet is to keep his horse or his boat from 
singing. 

The next composition is the far-famed Campaign, 
which Dr. Warton has termed a i Gazette in Rhyme/ 
with harshness not often used by the good nature of 

35 his criticism. Before a censure so severe is admitted, 
let us consider that war is a frequent subject of poetry, 
and then inquire who has described it with more just- 



352 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

ness and force. Many of our own writers tried their 
powers upon this year of victory; yet Addison's is 
confessedly the best performance : his poem is the work 
of a man not blinded by the dust of learning; his images 
are not borrowed merely from books. The superiority 5 
which he confers upon his hero is not personal prowess, 
and 'mighty bone/ but deliberate intrepidity, a calm 
command of his passions, and the power of consulting 
his own mind in the midst of danger. The rejection 
and contempt of fiction is rational and manly. 10 

It may be observed that the last line is imitated by 
Pope : 

Marlb'roagh's exploits appear divinely bright — 

Rais'd of themselves, their genuine charms they boast, 

And those that paint them truest, praise them most. 15 

This Pope had in his thoughts: but, not knowing how 
to use what was not his own, he spoiled the thought 
when he had borrowed it : 

The well-sung woes shall soothe my pensive ghost ; 

He best can paint them who shall feel them most. 20 

Martial exploits may be painted: perhaps woes may be 
painted; but they are surely not painted by being well- 
sung : it is not easy to paint in song, or to sing in 
colors. 

No passage in the Campaign has been more often men- 25 
tioned than the simile of the Angel, which is said in 
The Tatler to be i one of the noblest thoughts that ever 
entered into the heart of man/ and is therefore worthy 
of attentive consideration. Let it be first inquired 
whether it be a simile. A poetical simile is the discovery 30 
of likeness between two actions, in their general nature 
dissimilar, or of causes terminating by different opera- 
tions in some resemblance of effect. But the mention 
of another like consequence from a like cause, or of 
a like performance by a like agency, is not a simile, but 35 
an exemplification. It is not a simile to say that the 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 353 

Thames waters fields, as the Po waters fields; or that 
as Heela vomits flames in Iceland, so iEtna vomits 
flames in Sicily. When Horace says of Pindar, that 
he pours his violence and rapidity of verse, as a river 
5 swollen with rain rushes from the mountain ; or of him- 
self, that his genius wanders in quest of poetical decora- 
tions, as the bee wanders to collect honey; he, in either 
case, produces a simile; the mind is impressed with 
the resemblance of things generally unlike, as unlike as 

10 intellect and body. But if Pindar had been described 
as writing with the copiousness and grandeur of Homer, 
or Horace had told that he reviewed and finished his 
own poetry with the same care as Isocrates polished his 
orations, instead of similitude he would have exhibited 

15 almost identity ; he would have given the same portraits 
with different names. In the poem now examined, when 
the English are represented as gaining a fortified pass, 
by repetition of attack and perseverance of resolution; 
their obstinacy of courage, and vigor of onset, is well 

20 illustrated by the sea that breaks, with incessant battery, 
the dikes of Holland. This is a simile. But when Addi- 
son, having celebrated the beauty of Marlborough's per- 
son, tells us, that ' Achilles thus was formed with every 
grace/ here is no simile, but a mere exemplification. 

25 A simile may be compared to lines converging at a point, 
and is more excellent as the lines approach from greater 
distance; an exemplification may be considered as two 
parallel lines, which run on together without approxima- 
tion, never far separated, and never joined. 

30 Marlborough is so like the angel in the poem, that 
the action of both is almost the same, and performed 
by both in the same manner. Marlborough 6 teaches the 
battle to rage ' ; the angel i .directs the storm ? : Marl- 
borough is ' unmoved in peaceful thought 7 ; the angel is 

35 ' calm and serene ' : Marlborough stands l unmoved 
amidst the shock of hosts ' ; the angel rides i calm in 
the whirlwind/ The lines on Marlborough are just and 



354 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

noble ; but the simile gives almost the same images a 
second time. 

But perhaps this thought, though hardly a simile, 
was remote from vulgar conceptions, and required great 
labor of research, or dexterity of application. Of this, 5 
Dr. Madden, a name which Ireland ought to honor, 
once gave me his opinion. ' If I had set/ said he, 
' ten schoolboys to write on the battle of Blenheim, 
and eight had brought me the angel, I should not have 
been surprised.' 10 

The opera of Rosamond, though it is seldom men- 
tioned, is one of the first of Addison's compositions. 
The subject is well chosen, the fiction is pleasing, and 
the praise of Marlborough, for which the scene gives 
an opportunity, is, what perhaps every human excellence 15 
must be, the product of good luck, improved by genius. 
The thoughts are sometimes great and sometimes tender; 
the versification is easy and gay. There is doubtless 
some advantage in the shortness of the lines, which 
there is little temptation to load with expletive epithets. 20 
The dialogue seems commonly better than the songs. 
The two comic characters of Sir Trusty and Grideline, 
though of no great value, are yet such as the poet 
intended. Sir Trusty's account of the death of Rosa- 
mond is, I think, too grossly absurd. The whole drama 25 
is airy and elegant; engaging in its process, and pleas- 
ing in its conclusion. If Addison had cultivated the 
lighter parts of poetry, he would probably have ex- 
celled. 

The tragedy of Cato, which, contrary to the rule 30 
observed in selecting the works of others poets, has, 
by the weight of its character forced its way into the 
late collection, is unquestionably the noblest production 
of Addison's genius. Of a work so much read, it is 
difficult to say any thing new. About things on which 35 
the public thinks long, it commonly attains to think 
right; and of Cato it has been not unjustly determined, 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 355 

that it is rather a poem in dialogue than a drama, rather 
a succession of just sentiments in elegant language, 
than a representation of natural affections, or of any 
state probable or possible in human life. Nothing here 
5 ' excites or assuages emotion J ; here is ' no magical power 
of raising fantastic terror or wild anxiety/ The events 
are expected without solicitude, and are remembered 
without joy or sorrow. Of the agents we have no care; 
we consider not what they are doing, or what they are 

10 suffering; we wish only to know what they have to 
say. Cato is a being above our solicitude; a man of 
whom the gods take care, and whom we leave to their 
care with heedless confidence. To the rest, neither gods 
nor men can have much attention; for there is not one 

15 amongst them that strongly attracts either affection or 
esteem. But they are made the vehicles of such senti- 
ments and such expression, that there is scarcely a 
scene in the play which the reader does not wish to 
impress upon his memory. 

20 When Cato was shown to Pope, he advised the author 
to print it, without any theatrical exhibition; suppos- 
ing that it would be read more favorably than heard. 
Addison declared himself of the same opinion; but 
urged the importunity of his friends for its appearance 

25 on the stage. The emulation of parties made it success- 
ful beyond expectation; and its success has introduced 
or confirmed among us the use of dialogue too declama- 
tory, of unaffecting elegance, and chill philosophy. 
The universality of applause, however it might quell 

30 the censure of common mortals, had no other effect 
than to harden Dennis in fixed dislike; but his dislike 
was not merely capricious. He found and showed many 
faults; he showed them indeed with anger, but he found 
them with acuteness, such as ought to rescue his criti- 

35 eism from oblivion ; though, at last, it will have no other 
life than it derives from the work which it endeavors 
to oppress. 



356 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

Why he pays no regard to the opinion of the audience, 
he gives his reason, by remarking, that, 

1 A deference is to be paid to a general applause, 
when it appears that that applause is natural and spon- 
taneous ; but that little regard is to be had to it, when 5 
it is affected and artificial. Of all the tragedies which 
in his memory have had vast and violent runs, not 
one has been excellent, few have been tolerable, most 
have been scandalous. When a poet writes a tragedy, 
who knows he has judgment, and who feels he has genius, 10 
that poet presumes upon his own merit, and scorns 
to make a cabal. That people come coolly to the 
representation of such a tragedy, without any violent 
expectation, or delusive imagination, or invincible pre- 
possession ; that such an audience is liable to receive the 15 
impressions which the poem shall naturally make on 
them, and to judge by their own reason, and their own 
judgments, and that reason and judgment are calm and 
serene, not formed by nature to make proselytes, and 
to control and lord it over the imaginations of others. 20 
But that when an author writes a tragedy, who knows 
he has neither genius nor judgment, he has recourse 
to the making a party, and he endeavors to make up 
in industry what is wanting in talent, and to supply 
by poetical craft the absence of poetical art : that such 25 
an author is humbly contented to raise men's passions 
by a plot without doors, since he despairs of doing 
it by that which he brings upon the stage. That party 
and passion, and prepossession, are clamorous and tu- 
multuous things, and so much the more clamorous and 30 
tumultuous by how much the more erroneous: that they 
domineer and tyrannize over the imaginations of per- 
sons who want judgment, and sometimes too of those 
who have it; and, like a fierce and outrageous torrent, 
bear down all opposition before them.' 35 

He then condemns the neglect of poetical justice; 
which is always one of his favorite principles. 



THE LIFE OF ADDIS OX 357 

1 'Tis certainly the duty of every tragic poet, by the 
exact distribution of poetical justice, to imitate the 
Divine dispensation, and to inculcate a particular Provi- 
dence. ? Tis true, indeed, upon the stage of the world, 
5 the wicked sometimes prosper, and the guiltless suffer. 
But that is permitted by the Governor of the world, 
to show, from the attribute of his infinite justice, that 
there is a compensation in futurity, to prove the im- 
mortality of the human soul, and the certainty of future 

10 rewards and punishments. But the poetical persons in 
tragedy exist no longer than the reading, or the repre- 
sentation; the whole extent of their entity is circum- 
scribed by those; and therefore, during that reading 
or representation, according to their merits or demerits, 

15 they must be punished or rewarded. If this is not done, 
there is no impartial distribution of poetical justice, 
no instructive lecture of a particular Providence, and 
no imitation of the Divine dispensation. And yet the 
author of this tragedy does not only run counter to 

20 this, in the fate of his principal character ; but every 
where, throughout it, makes virtue suffer, and vice 
triumph : for not only Cato is vanquished by Caesar, 
but the treachery and perfidiousness of Syphax prevails 
over the honest simplicity and the credulity of Juba; 

25 and the sly subtlety and dissimulation of Portius over 

the generous frankness and open-heartedness of Marcus/ 

Whatever pleasure there may be in seeing crimes 

punished and virtue rewarded, yet since wickedness 

often prospers in real life, the poet is certainly at 

30 liberty to give it prosperity on the stage. For if poetry 
has an imitation of reality, how are its laws broken 
by exhibiting the world in its true form? The stage 
may sometimes gratify our wishes; but, if it be truly 
the \ mirror of life/ it ought to show us sometimes what 
|35 we are to expect. 

Dennis objects to the characters, that they are not 
natural, or reasonable: but as heroes and heroines are 



358 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

not beings that are seen every day, it is hard to find 
upon what principles their conduct shall be tried. It 
is, however, not useless to consider what he says of 
the manner in which Cato receives the account of his 
son's death. 5 

6 Nor is the grief of Cato, in the fourth act, one 
jot more in nature than that of his son and Lucia in 
the third. Cato receives the news of his son's death 
not only with dry eyes, but with a sort of satisfaction; 
and in the same page sheds tears for the calamity of 10 
his country, and does the same thing in the next page 
upon the bare apprehension of the danger of his friends. 
Now, since the love of one's country is the love of 
one's countrymen, as I have shown upon another occa- 
sion, I desire to ask these questions : Of all our country- 15 
men, which do we love most, those whom we know, 
or those whom we know not? And of those whom we 
know, which do we cherish most, our friends or our 
enemies? And of our friends, which are the dearest 
to us, those who are related to us, or those who are 20 
not? And of all our relations, for which have we most 
tenderness, for those who are near to us, or for those 
who are remote? And of our near relations, which are 
the nearest, and consequently the dearest to us, our off- 
spring, or others? Our offspring most certainly; as 25 
Nature, or in other words, Providence, has wisely con- 
trived for the preservation of mankind. Now, does 
it not follow from what has been said, that for a man 
to receive the news of his son's death with dry eyes, 
and to weep at the same time for the calamities of his 30 
country, is a wretched affectation, and a miserable in- 
consistency? Is not that, in plain English, to receive 
with dry eyes the news of the deaths of those for whose 
sake our country is a name so dear to us, and at the 
same time to shed tears for those for whose sakes our 35 
country is not a name so dear to us/ 

But this formidable assailant is least resistible when 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 359 

he attacks the probability of the action, and the reason- 
ableness of the plan. Every critical reader must re- 
mark, that Addison has, with a scrupulosity almost un- 
exampled on the English stage, confined himself in 
5 time to a single day, and in place to rigorous unity. 
The scene never changes, and the whole action of the 
play passes in the great hall of Cato's house at Utica, 
Much therefore is done in the hall, for which any other 
place had beeD more fit; and this impropriety affords 
10 Dennis many hints of merriment, and opportunities of 
triumph. The passage is long; but as such disquisitions 
are not common, and the objections are skillfully formed 
and vigorously urged, those who delight in critical con- 
troversy will not think it tedious. 

15 Such is the censure of Dennis. There is, as Dryden 
expresses it, perhaps \ too much horse-play in his rail- 
lery'; but if his jests are coarse, his arguments are 
strong. Yet, as we love better to be pleased than to 
be taught, Cato is read, and the critic is neglected. 

20 Flushed with consciousness of these detections of ab- 
surdity in the conduct, he afterwards attacked the senti- 
ments of Cato; but he then amused himself with petty 
cavils, and minute objections. 

Of Addison's smaller poems, no particular mention is 

25 necessary ; they have little that can employ or require a 
critic. The parallel of the princes and gods, in his 
verses to Kneller, is often happy, but is too well known 
to be quoted. 

His translations, so far as I have compared them, 

30 want the exactness of a scholar. That he understood 
his authors cannot be doubted; but his versions will 
not teach others to understand them, behig too licen- 
tiously paraphrastical. They are, however, for the most 
part, smooth and easy; and, what is the first excellence 

35 of a translator, such as may be read with pleasure by 
those who do not know the originals. 



360 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

His poetry is polished and pure; the product of a 
mind too judicious to commit faults, but not sufficiently 
vigorous to attain excellence. He has sometimes a strik- 
ing line, or a shining paragraph; but in the whole 
he is warm rather than fervid, and shows more dexterity 5 
than strength. He was, however, one of our earliest 
examples of correctness. 

The versification which he had learned from Dryden 
he debased rather than refined. His rhymes are often 
dissonant; in his Georgic he admits broken lines. He 10 
uses both triplets and alexandrines, but triplets more 
frequently in his translations than his other works. 
The mere structure of verses seems never to have en- 
gaged much of his care. But his lines are very smooth 
in Rosamond, and too smooth in Cato. 15 

y Addison is now to be considered as a critic; a name 
which the present generation is scarcely willing to allow 
him. His criticism is condemned as tentative or ex- 
perimental, rather than scientific; and he is considered 
as deciding by taste rather than by principles. 20 

It is not uncommon for those who have grown wise 
by the labor of others, to add a little of their own, 
and overlook their masters. Addison is now despised 
by some who perhaps would never have seen his defects, 
but by the lights which he afforded them. That he al- 25 
ways wrote as he would think it necessary to write 
now, cannot be affirmed; his instructions were such as 
the character of his readers made proper. That general 
knowledge which noAv circulates in common talk, was 
in his time rarely to be found. Men not professing 30 
learning were not ashamed of ignorance; and in the 
female world, any acquaintance with books was dis- 
tinguished only to be censured. His purpose was to 
infuse literary curiosity, by gentle and unsuspected con- 
veyance, into the gay, the idle, and the wealthy ; he 35 
therefore presented knowledge in the most alluring form, 
not lofty and austere, but accessible and familiar. When 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 361 

he showed them their defects, he showed them likewise 
that they might be easily supplied. His attempt suc- 
ceeded; inquiry was awakened, and comprehension ex- 
panded. An emulation of intellectual elegance was ex- 
5 cited, and from his time to our own, life has been 
gradually exalted, and conversation purified and en- 
larged. 

Dryden had, not many years before, scattered criti- 
cism over his prefaces with very little parsimony; but, 

10 though he sometimes condescended to be somewhat fa- 
miliar, his manner was in general too scholastic for 
those who had yet their rudiments to learn, and found 
it not easy to understand their master. His observations 
were framed rather for those that were learning to 

15 write, than for those that read only to talk. 

An instructor like Addison was now wanting, whose 
remarks being superficial, might be easily understood, 
and being just, might prepare the mind for more attain- 
ments. Had he presented Paradise Lost to the public 

20 with all the pomp of system and severity of science, 
the criticism would perhaps have been admired, and the 
poem still have been neglected; but by the blandishments 
of gentleness and facility he has made Milton an uni- 
versal favorite, with whom readers of every class think 

25 it necessary to be pleased. 

He descended now and then to lower disquisitions; 
and by a serious display of the beauties of Chevy-Chase 
exposed himself to the ridicule of Wagstaff, who be- 
stowed a like pompous character on i Tom Thumb ' ; 

30 and to the contempt of Dennis, who, considering the 
fundamental position of his criticism, that Chevy-Chase 
pleases, and ought to please, because it is natural, 
observes, ' that there is a way of deviating from nature 
by bombast or tumor, which soars above nature,^ and 

35 enlarges images beyond their real bulk; by affectation, 
which forsakes nature in quest of something unsuitable; 
and by imbecility, which degrades nature by faintness 



362 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

and diminution, by obscuring its appearances, and 
weakening its effects.' In Chevy-Chase there is not 
much of either bombast or affectation; but there is chill 
and lifeless imbecility. The story cannot possibly be 
told in a manner that shall make less impression on 5 
the mind. 

Before the profound observers of the present race 
repose too securely on the consciousness of their su- 
periority to Addison, let them consider his Remarks on 
Ovid, in which may be found specimens of criticism 10 
sufficiently subtle and refined: let them peruse like- 
wise his Essays on Wit, and on the pleasures of Imagina- 
tion, in which he founds art on the base of nature, and 
draws the principles of invention from dispositions in- 
herent in the mind of man with skill and elegance, such 15 
as his contemners will not easily attain. 

As a describer of life and manners, he must be 
allowed to stand perhaps the first of the first rank. 
His humor, which as Steele observes, is peculiar to him- 
self, is so happily diffused as to give the grace of 20 
novelty to domestic scenes and daily occurrences. He 
neither ' outsteps the modesty of nature/ nor raises merri- 
ment or wonder by the violation of truth. His figures 
never divert by distortion, nor amaze by aggravation. 
He copies life 1 with so much fidelity, that he can be 25 
hardly said to invent; yet his exhibitions have an air 
so much original, that it is difficult to suppose them 
not merely the product of imagination. 

As a teacher of wisdom, he may be confidently fol- 
lowed. His religion has nothing in it enthusiastic or 30 
superstitious : he appears neither weakly credulous, nor 
wantonly sceptical; his morality is neither dangerously 
lax, nor impracticably rigid. All the enchantment of 
fancy, and all the cogency of argument, are employed 
to recommend to the reader his real interest, the care 35 
of pleasing the author of his being. Truth is shown 
sometimes as the phantom of a vision; sometimes ap- 



THE LIFE OF ADDISON 363 

pears half -veiled in an allegory: sometimes attracts 
regard in the robes of fancy, and sometimes steps forth 
in the confidence of reason. She wears a thousand 
dresses, and in all is pleasing. 

5 Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet. 

His prose is the model of the middle style; on grave 
subjects not formal, on light occasions not grovelling, 
pure without scrupulosity, and exact without apparent 
elaboration; always equable, and always easy, without 

10 glowing words or pointed sentences. Addison never 
deviates from his track to snatch a grace; he seeks no 
ambitious ornaments, and tries no hazardous innova- 
tions. His page is always luminous, but never blazes 
in unexpected splendor. 

15 It was apparently his principal endeavor to avoid all 
harshness and severity of diction; he is therefore some- 
times verbose hi his transitions and connections, and 
sometimes descends too much to the language of con- 
versation; yet if his language had been less idiomatical, 

20 it might have lost somewhat of its genuine Anglicism. 
What he attempted, he performed; he is never feeble, 
and he did not wish to be energetic; he is never rapid, 
and he never stagnates. His sentences have neither 
studied amplitude, nor affected brevity: his periods, 

25 though not diligently rounded, are voluble and easy. 
Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but 
not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give 
his days and nights to the volumes of Addison. 



; tbe 2>eatb of /I6t. IRobert Xevett, 
a practisec in ipb^aic 

[written in 1782] 

Condemn'd to Hope's delusive mine, 

As on we toil from day to day, 
By sudden blast, or slow decline, 

Our social comforts drop away. 

Well try'd through many a varying year, 5 

See Levett to the grave descend, 
Officious, innocent, sincere, 

Of ev'ry friendless name the friend. 

Yet still he fills Affection's eye, 

Obscurely wise, and coarsely kind; 10 

Nor, letter'd Arrogance, deny 

Thy praise to merit unrefin'd. 

When fainting Nature call'd for aid, 
And hov'ring Death prepar'd the blow, 

His vig'rous remedy display'd 15 

The power of art without the show. 

In Misery's darkest cavern known, 

His ready help was ever nigh, 
Where hopeless Anguish pour'd his groan, 

And lonely Want retir'd to die. 20 

No summons mock'd by chill delay, 

No petty gains disdain'd by pride, 
The modest wants of ev'ry day 

The toil of ev'ry day supply'd. 

3&4 



ON THE DEATH OF MB. ROBERT LEVETT 365 

His virtues walk'd their narrow round, 25 

Nor made a pause, nor left a void; 

And sure the Eternal Master found 
His single talent well employ'd. 

The busy day, the peaceful night, 

Unfelt, uncounted, glided by; 30 

His frame was firm, his powers were bright, 

Though now his eightieth year was nigh. 

Then with no throbs of fiery pain, 

No cold gradations of decay, 
Death broke at once the vital chain, 35 

And freed his soul the nearest way. 



letters 

TO WILLIAM STRAHAN 

Nov. 1, 1751. 
Dearest Sir: 

The message which you sent me by Mr. Stuart I do 
not consider as at all your own, but if you were con- 
tented to be the deliverer of it to me, you must favor 5 
me so far as to return my answer, which I have written 
down to spare you the unpleasing office of doing it 
in your own words. You advise me to write, I know 
with very kind intentions, nor do I intend to treat 
your counsel with any disregard when I declare that 10 
in the present state of the matter ' I shall not write '- - 
otherwise than the words following: 

' That my resolution has long been, and is not now 
altered, and is now less likely to be altered, that I 
shall not see the Gentlemen Partners till the first volume 15 
is in the press, which they may forward or retard by 
dispensing or not dispensing with the last message.' 

Be pleased to lay this my determination before them 
this morning, for I shall think of taking my measures 
accordingly to-morrow evening, only this that I mean 20 
no harm, but that my citadel shall not be taken by 
storm while I can defend it, and that if a blockade 
is intended, the country is under the command of my 
batteries, I shall think of laying it under contribution 
to-morrow evening. I am, Sir, 25 

Your most obliged, most obedient, 

and most humble servant, 

Sam. Johnson. 
306 



LETTERS 367 

TO MISS BOOTHBY 

January 8, 1756. 
Honored Madam: 

I beg of you to endeavor to live. I have returned 
your Law, which, however, I earnestly entreat you to 
5 give me. I am in great trouble ; if you can write three 
words to me, be pleased to do it. I am afraid to say 
much, and cannot say nothing when my dearest is in 
danger. 

The all-merciful God have mercy on you. 
10 I am, Madam, 

Your, &c, 

Sam. Johnson. 

to mr. burney, in lynne, norfolk 
Sir: 

That I may show myself sensible of your favors, 

15 and not commit the same fault a second time, I make 
haste to answer the letter which I received this morn- 
ing. The truth is, the other likewise was received, 
and I wrote an answer; but being desirous to transmit 
you some proposals and receipts, I waited till I could 

20 find a convenient conveyance, and day was passed after 
day, till other things drove it from nry thoughts : yet 
not so, but that I remember with great pleasure your 
commendation of my Dictionary. Your praise was wel- 
come, not only because I believe it was sincere, but 

25 because praise has been very scarce. A man of your 
candor will be surprised when I tell you, that among 
all my acquaintance there were only two who, upon 
the publication of my book, did not endeavor to depress 
me with threats of censure from the public, or with 

30 objections learned from those who had learned them 
from my own Preface. Yours is the only letter of good 
will that I have received : though, indeed, I am promised 
something of that sort from Sweden. 



368 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

How my new edition will be received I know not; 
the subscription has not been very successful. I shall 
publish about March. 

If you can direct me how to send proposals, I should 
wish that they were in such hands. 5 

I remember, Sir, in some of the first letters with 
which you favored me, you mentioned your lady. May 
I inquire after her? In return for the favors which 
you have shown me, it is not much to tell you, that 
I wish you and her all that can conduce to your happi- 10 
ness. I am, Sir, 

Your most obliged, 

And most humble servant, 
Sam. Johnson. 

Gough Square, Dec. 24, 1757. 15 



to mrs. johnson (his mother) 

Honored Madam : 

The account which Miss gives me of your health 
pierces my heart. God comfort and preserve you and 
save you, for the sake of Jesus Christ. 

I would have Miss read to you from time to time 20 
the Passion of our Savior, and sometimes the sentences 
in the Communion Service, beginning, ' Come unto me, 
all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will give 
you rest/ 

I have just now read a physical book, which inclines 25 
me to think that a strong infusion of the bark would 
do you good. Do, dear mother, try it. 

Pray, send me your blessing, and forgive all that 
I have done amiss to you. And whatever you would 
have done, and what debts you would have paid first, or 30 
any thing else that you would direct, let Miss put it 
down; I shall endeavor to obey you. 

I have got twelve guineas to send you, but unhappily 



LETTERS 369 

am at a loss how to send it to-night. If I cannot send 
it to-night, it will come by the next post. 

Pray, do not omit any thing mentioned in this letter; 
God bless you for ever and ever. 
5 I am your dutiful son, 

Jan. 13, 1759. Sam. Johnson. 

to miss porter 
My dear Miss : 

I think myself obliged to you beyond all expression 
of gratitude for your care of my dear mother. God 
10 grant it may not be without success. Tell Kitty that 
I shall never forget her tenderness for her mistress. 
"Whatever you can do, continue to do. My heart is 
very full. 

I hope you received twelve guineas on Monday. I 
15 found a way of sending them by means of the post- 
master, after I had written my letter, and hope they 
came safe. I will send you more in a few days. God 
bless you all. I am, my dear, 

Your most obliged 
20 and most humble servant, 

Jan. 16, 1759. Sam. Johnson. 

Over the leaf is a letter to my mother. 
(ok the back) 
Dear Honored Mother: 

Your weakness afflicts me beyond what I am willing 
25 to communicate to you. I do not think you unfit to 
face death, but I know not how to bear the thought 
of losing you. Endeavor to do all you [can] for your- 
self. Eat as much as you can. 

I pray often for you; do you pray for me. I have 
30 nothing to add to my last letter. 

I am, dear, dear mother, 

Your dutiful son, 
Jan. 16, 1759. Sam. Johnson. 



i 



370 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

Dear Honored Mother: 

I fear you are too ill for long letters; therefore I 
will only tell you, you have from me all the regard 
that can possibly subsist in the heart. I pray God 
to bless you for evermore, for Jesus Christ's sake. 5 
Amen. 

Let Miss write to me every post, however short. 
I am, dear mother, 

Your dutiful son, 

Jan. 18, 1759. Sam. Johnson. 10 



TO MISS PORTER 

Dear Miss: 

I will, if it be possible, come down to you. God grant, 
I may yet [find] my dear mother breathing and sen- 
sible. Do not tell her lest I disappoint her. If I miss 
to write next post, I am on the road. 15 

I am, my dearest Miss, 

Your most humble servant, 
Sam. Johnson. 
Jan. 20, 1759. 

TO MRS. JOHNSON 

Dear Honored Mother: 20 

Neither your condition nor your character make it 
fit for me to say much. You have been the best mother, 
and I believe the best woman in the world. I thank 
you for your indulgence to me, and beg forgiveness of 
all that I have done ill, and all that I have omitted 25 
to do well. God grant you his Holy Spirit, and receive 
you to everlasting happiness, for Jesus Christ's sake. 
Amen. Lord Jesus receive your spirit. Amen. 
I am, dear, dear mother, 

Your dutiful son, 30 

Jan. 20, 1759. Sam. Johnson. 



LETTERS 371 

to a lady who solicited him to obtain" the arch- 
bishop of canterbury's patronage to have her 
son sent to the university 
Madam : 

I hope you will believe that my delay in answering 
your letter could proceed only from my unwillingness 
to destroy any hope that you had formed. Hope is 
5 itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief 
happiness which this world affords: but, like all other 
pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope 
must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly 
indulged must end in disappointment. If it be asked, 

10 what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous 
to indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is 
such expectation as is dictated not by reason, but by 
desire; expectation raised, not by the common occur- 
rences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an 

15 expectation that requires the common course of things 
to be changed, and the general rules of action to be 
broken. 

When you made your request to me, you should have 
considered, Madam, what you were asking. You ask 

20 me to solicit a great man, to whom I never spoke, for 
a young person whom I had never seen, upon a supposi- 
tion which I had no means of knowing to be true. There 
is no reason why, amongst all the great, I should choose 
to supplicate the Archbishop, nor why, among all the 

25 possible objects of his bounty, the Archbishop should 
choose your son. I know, Madam, how unwillingly 
conviction is admitted, when interest opposes it; but 
surely, Madam, you must allow, that there is no reason 
why that should be done by me, which every' other man 

30 may do with equal reason, and which, indeed, no man 
can do properly, without some very particular relation 
both to the Archbishop and to you. If I could help 
you in this exigence by any proper means, it would 
give me pleasure; but this proposal is so very remote 



372 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

from all usual methods, that I cannot comply with it, 
but at the risk of such answer and suspicions as I 
believe you do not wish me to undergo. 

I have seen your son this morning; he seems a pretty 
youth, and will, perhaps, find some better friend than 5 
I can procure him; but, though he should at last miss 
the University, he may still be wise, useful, and happy. 
I am, Madam, 

Your most humble servant, 

Sam. Johnson". 10 
June 8, 1762. 



to the right honorable the earl of bute 

My Lord : 

When the bills were yesterday delivered to me by 
Mr. Wedderburne, I was informed by him of the future 
favors which his Majesty has, by your Lordship's recom- 15 
mendation, been induced to intend for me. 

Bounty always receives part of its value from the 
manner in which it is bestowed; your Lordship's kind- 
ness includes every circumstance that can gratify deli- 
cacy, or enforce obligation. You have conferred your 20 
favors on a man w 7 ho has neither alliance nor interest, 
who has not merited them by services, nor courted them 
by officiousness ; you have spared him the shame of 
solicitation, and the anxiety of suspense. 

What has been thus elegantly given, will, I hope, 25 
not be reproachfully enjoyed; I shall endeavor to give 
your Lordship the only recompense which generosity 
desires — the gratification of finding that your benefits 
are not improperly bestowed. I am, my Lord, 

Your Lordship's most obliged, 30 

Most obedient, and most humble servant, 

Sam. Johnson. 

July 20, 1762. 



LETTERS 373 

to bexxet laxgtox, at laxgtox, lincolnshire 
Dear Sir : 

What your friends have done, that from your de- 
parture till now nothing has been heard of you, none 
of us are able to inform the rest; but as we are all 
5 neglected alike, no one thinks himself entitled to the 
privilege of complaint. 

I should have known nothing of you or of Langton, 
from the time that dear Miss Langton left us, had not 
I met Mr. Simpson, of Lincoln, one day in the street, 
10 by whom I was informed that Mr. Langton, your 
Mamma, and yourself, had been all ill, but that you 
were all recovered. 

That sickness should suspend your correspondence, I 
did not wonder; but hoped that it would be renewed at 
15 your recovery. 

Since you will not inform us where you are, or how 
you live, I know not whether you desire to know any- 
thing of us. However, I will tell you that the Club 
subsists, but we have the loss of Burke's company since 
20 he has been engaged in public business, in which he has 
gained more reputation than perhaps any man at his 
[first] appearance ever gained before. He made two 
speeches in the House for repealing the Stamp Act, 
which were publicly commended by Mr. Pitt, and have 
25 filled the town with wonder. 

Burke is a great man by nature, and is expected soon 
to attain civil greatness. I am grown greater too, for 
I have maintained the newspapers these many weeks; 
and what is greater still, I have risen every morning 
30 since New Year's day, at about eight; when I was up, I 
have indeed done but little; yet it is no slight advance- 
ment to obtain for so many hours more, the conscious- 
ness of being. 

I wish you were in my new study; I am now writing 
35 the first letter in it. I think it looks very pretty about 



374 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

Dyer is constant at the Club; Hawkins is remiss; I 
am not over diligent. Dr. Nugent, Dr. Goldsmith, and 
Mr. Reynolds, are very constant. Mr. Lye is printing 
his Saxon and Gothic Dictionary; all the Club sub- 
scribes. 5 

You will pay my respects to all my Lincolnshire 
friends. I am, dear Sir, 

Most affectionately yours, 
Sam. Johnson. 
March 9, 1766. 10 

Johnson's Court, Fleet Street. 

to james boswell 
Dear Sir: 

If you are now able to comprehend that I might 
neglect to write without diminution of affection, you 
have taught me, likewise, how that neglect may be un- 15 
easily felt without resentment. I wished for your letter 
a long time, and when it came, it amply recompensed 
the delay. I never was so much pleased as now with 
your account of yourself; and sincerely hope, that be- 
tween public business, improving studies, and domestic 20 
pleasures, neither melancholy nor caprice will find any 
place for entrance. Whatever philosophy may deter- 
mine of material nature, it is certainly true of intel- 
lectual nature that it abhors a vacuum: our minds cannot 
be empty ; and evil will break in upon them, if they are 25 
not preoccupied by good. My dear Sir, mind your 
studies, mind your business, make your lady happy, 
and be a good Christian. After this, 

tristitiam et metus 
Trades protervis in mare Creticum 30 

Portare ventis. 

If we perform our duty, we shall be safe and steady, 
' Sive per ? &c, whether we climb the Highlands, or 
are tost among the Hebrides; and I hope the time 



LETTERS 375 

will come when Ave may try our powers both with cliffs 
and water. I see but little of Lord Elibank, I know 
not why; perhaps by my own fault. I am this day 
going into Staffordshire and Derbyshire for six weeks. 
5 I am, dear Sir, 

Your most affectionate, 

And most humble servant, 

Sam. Johnson 
London, June 20, 1771. 

TO MRS. THRALE 

10 Ashbourne, July 3, 1771. 

Dear Madam: 

Last Saturday I came to Ashbourne; the dangers or 
the pleasures of the journey I have at present no dis- 
position to recount; else might I paint the beauties of 

15 my native plains ; might I tell of ' the smiles of nature, 
and the charms of art ' : else might I relate how I 
crossed the Staffordshire canal, one of the great efforts 
of human labor, and human contrivance; which, from 
the bridge on which I viewed it, passed away on either 

20 side, and loses itself in distant regions, uniting waters 
that nature had divided, and dividing lands which nature 
had united. I might tell how these reflections fermented 
in my mind till the chaise stopped at Ashbourne, at 
Ashbourne in the Peak. Let not the barren name of the 

25 Peak terrify you ; I have never wanted strawberries and 
cream. The great bull has no disease but age. I hope 
in time to be like the great bull; and hope you will 
be like him too a hundred years hence. I am, &c. 

Sam. Johnson. 

30 Mr. James Macpherson : 

I received your foolish and impudent letter. Any 
violence offered me I shall do my best to repel; and 
what I cannot do for myself the law shall do for me. 



376 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what 
I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian. 

What would you have me retract? I thought your 
book an imposture; I think it an imposture still. For 
this opinion I have given my reasons to the public, which 5 
I here dare you to refute. Your rage I defy. Your 
abilities, since your Homer, are not so formidable; and 
what I hear of your morals, inclines me to pay regard 
not to what you shall say, but to what you shall prove. 
You may print this if you will. 10 

Sam. Johnson. 



TO MRS. THRALE 

Lichfield, June 19, 1775. 
Dear Madam: 

I hope it is very true that Ralph mends, and wish 
you were gone to see him, that you might come back 15 
again. 

Queeney revenges her long task upon Mr. Baretti's 
hen, who must sit on duck eggs a week longer than on 
her own. I hope she takes great care of my hen, and 
the Guinea hen, and her pretty little brood. 20 

I was afraid Mawbey would succeed, and have little 
hope from the scrutiny. Did you ever know a scrutiny 
change the account? 

Miss A does not run after me, but I do not want 

her, here are other ladies. 25 

Invenies alium, si te hie fastidit Alexis. 

Miss . . . grows old, and Miss Vyse has been ill, but 
I believe she came to me as soon as she got out. And 
I can always go to Stowhill. So never grieve about me. 
Only flatulencies are come again. 30 

Your dissertation upon Queeney is very deep. I know 
not what to say to the chief question. Nature probably 



LETTERS • 377 

has some part in human characters, and accident has 
some part; which has most we will try to settle when 
we meet. 

Small letters will undoubtedly gain room for more 
5 words, but words are useless if they cannot be read. 
The lines need not all be kept distinct, and some words 
I shall wish to leave out, though very few. It must 
be revised before it is engraved. I always told you 
that Mr. Thrale was a man, take him for all in all, 
10 you ne'er will look upon his like ; but you never mind 
him nor me, till time forces conviction into your steely 
bosom. You will, perhaps, find all right about the 
house and the windows. 

Pray always suppose that I send my respects to 
15 Master, and Queeney, and Harry, and Susey, and Sophy. 
Poor Lucy mends very slowly, but she is very good- 
humored, while I do just as she would have me. 

Lady Smith has got a new post-chaise, which is not 
nothing to talk on at Lichfield. Little things here serve 
20 for conversation. Mrs. Aston's parrot pecked my leg, 
and I heard of it some time after at Mrs. Cobb's. 

-We deal in nicer things 



Than routing armies and dethroning kings.. 

A week ago Mrs. Cobb gave me sweetmeats to break- 
25 fast, and I heard of it last night at Stowhill. 

If you are for small talk, 

Come on, and do the best you can, 



I fear not you, nor yet a better man. 

I could tell you about Lucy's two cats, and Brill her 

30 brother's old dog, who is gone deaf; but the day would 

fail me. Suadentque cadentia sidera somnum. So said 

^Eneas. But I have not yet had my dinner. I have 

begun early, for what would become of the nation, if 



378 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

a letter of this importance should miss the post? Pray, 
write to, dearest Madam, 

Your, &c, 

Sam. Johnson. 



to mrs. boswell 
Madam : 5 

You must hot think me uncivil in omitting to answer 
the letter with which you favored me some time ago. 
I imagined it to have been written without Mr. Bos- 
well's knowledge, and therefore supposed the answer to 
require what I could not find, a private conveyance. 10 

The difference with Lord Auchinleck is now over; and 
since young Alexander has appeared, I hope no more 
difficulties will arise among you; for I sincerely wish 
you all happy. Do not teach the young ones to dislike 
me as you dislike me yourself ; but let me at least 15 
have Veronica's kindness, because she is my acquaint- 
ance. 

You will now have Mr. Boswell home; it is well that 
you have him; he has led a wild life. I have taken him 
to Lichfield, and he has followed Mr. Thrale to Bath. 20 
Pray take care of him and tame him. The only thing 
in which I have the honor to agree with you is in loving 
him; and while we are so much of a mind in a matter 
of so much importance, our other quarrels will, I hope, 
produce no great bitterness. I am, Madam, 25 

Your most humble servant, 

Sam. Johnson. 

May 16, 1776. 

to the king 

Sir: 

I presume to lay before your Majesty the last labors 30 
of a learned Bishop, who died in the toils and duties 
of his calling. He is now beyond the reach of all 



LETTERS 379 

earthly honors and rewards; and only the hope of in- 
citing others to imitate hhn, makes it now fit to be 
remembered, that he enjoyed in his life the favor of 
your Majesty. 
5 The tumultuary life of Princes seldom permits them 
to survey the wide extent of national interest, without 
losing sight of private merit; to exhibit qualities which 
may be imitated by the highest and the humblest of man- 
kind; and to be at once amiable and great. 
10 Such characters, if now and then they appear in 
history, are contemplated w 7 ith admiration. May it be 
the ambition of all your subjects to make haste with 
their tribute of reverence; and as, posterity may learn 
from your Majesty how Kings should live, may they 
15 learn, likewise, from your people, how they should be 
honored. I am, 

May it please your Majesty, 
With the most profound respect, 
Your Majesty's 
20 Most dutiful and devoted 

Subject and Servant. 



to mrs. boswell 

Madam : 

Though I am well enough pleased with the taste of 
sweetmeats, very little of the pleasure which I received 

25 at the arrival of your jar of marmalade arose from 
eating it. I received it as a token of friendship, as 
a proof of reconciliation, things much sweeter than 
sweetmeats, and upon this consideration I return you, 
dear Madam, my sincerest thanks. By having your 

30 kindness I think I have a double security for the con- 
tinuance of Mr. BoswelFs, which it is not to be ex- 
pected that any man can long keep, when the influence 
of a lady so highly and so justly valued operates against 



380 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

him. Mr. Boswell will tell you that I was always faith- 
ful to your interest, and always endeavored to exalt 
you in his estimation. You must now do the same for 
me. We must all help one another, and you must now 
consider me as, dear Madam, 5 

Your most obliged, 

And most humble servant, 

Sam. Johnson. 
July 22, 1777. 



TO JAMES BOSWELL 

Dear Sir: 10 

" I write to be left at Carlisle, as you direct me ; but 
you cannot have it. Your letter, elated Sept. 6, was 
not at this place till this day, Thursday, Sept. 11; and 
I hope you will be here before this is at Carlisle. How- 
ever, what you have not going you may have returning; 15 
and as I believe I shall not love you less after our 
interview, it will then be as true as it is now, that I 
set a very high value upon your friendship, and count 
your kindness as one of the chief felicities of my life. 
Do not fancy that an intermission of writing is a 20 
decay of kindness. No man is always in a disposition 
to write: nor has any man at all times something to 
say. 

That distrust that intrudes so often on your mind 
is a mode of melancholy, which, if it be the business 25 
of a wise man to be happy, it is foolish to indulge; 
and if it be a duty to preserve our faculties entire for 
their proper use, it is criminal. Suspicion is very often 
an useless pain. From that and all other pains, I wish 
you free and safe; for I am, dear Sir, 30 

Most affectionately yours, 

Sam. Johnson. 

Ashbourne, Sept. 11, 1777. 



LETTERS 381 

TO MRS. THRALE 

Lichfield, October 27, 1777. 
Dear Madam: 

You talk of writing and writing, as if you had all 
the writing to yourself. If our correspondence were 
5 printed, I am sure posterity, for posterity is always 
the author's favorite, would say that I am a good writer 
too — AncW io sono pittore. To sit down so often 
with nothing to say; to say something so often, almost 
without consciousness of saying, and without any re- 

lOmembrance of having said, is a power of which I will 
not violate my modesty by boasting, but I do not 
believe that every body has it. 

Some, when they write to their friends, are all affec- 
tion; some are wise and sententious; some strain their 

15 powers for efforts of gaiety ; some write news, and 
some write secrets; but to make a letter without affec- 
tion, without wisdom, without gaiety, without news, and 
without a secret, is, doubtless, the great epistolic art. 
In a man's letters, you know, Madam, his soul lies 

20 naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast ; 
whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in 
its natural process; nothing is inverted, nothing dis- 
torted; you see systems in their elements; you discover 
actions in their motives. 

25 Of this great truth, sounded by the knowing to the 
ignorant, and so echoed by the ignorant to the knowing, 
what evidence have you now before you! Is not my 
soul laid open in these veracious pages'? Do not you 
see me reduced to my first principles? This is the 

30 pleasure of corresponding with a friend, where doubt 
and distrust have no place, and every thing is said as 
it is thought. The original idea is laid down in its 
simple purity, and all the supervenient conceptions are 
spread over it stratum super stratum, as they happened 

35 to be formed. These are the letters by which souls are 



382 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

united, and by which minds naturally in unison move 
each other as they are moved themselves. I know, dear- 
est Lady, that in the perusal of this, such is the con- 
sanguinity of our intellects, you will be touched as I 
am touched. I have indeed concealed nothing from 5 
you, nor do I expect ever to repent of having thus 
opened my heart. I am, &c, 

Sam. Johnson. 

to james boswell 
Sir: 

The debate between Dr. Percy and me is one of those 10 
foolish controversies which begin upon a question of 
which neither party cares how it is decided, and which 
is, nevertheless, continued to acrimony, by the vanity 
with which every man resists confutation. Dr. Percy's 
warmth proceeded from a cause which, perhaps, does 15 
him more honor than he could have derived from juster 
criticism. His abhorrence of Pennant proceeded from 
his opinion that Pennant had wantonly and indecently 
censured his patron. His anger made him resolve that, 
for having been once wrong he never should be right. 20 
Pennant has much in his notions that I do not like: 
but still I think him a very intelligent traveler. If 
Percy is really offended, I am sorry; for he is a 
man whom I never knew to offend any one. He is 
a man very willing to learn, and very able to teach; 25 
a man out of whose company I never go without having 
learned something. It is sure that he vexes me some- 
times, but I am afraid it is by making me feel my 
own ignorance. So much extension of mind, and so 
much minute accuracy of inquiry, if you survey your 30 
whole circle of acquaintance, you will find so scarce, 
if you find it at all, that you will value Percy by com- 
parison. Lord Hailes is somewhat like him: but Lord 
Hailes does not, perhaps, go beyond him in research;, 
and I do not know that he equals him in elegance. 



LETTERS 383 

Percy's attention to poetry has given grace and splendor 
to bis studies of antiquity. A mere antiquarian is a 
rugged being. 

Upon tbe whole, you see that what I might say in 
5 sport or petulance to him, is very consistent with full 
conviction of his merit. 

I am, dear Sir, 

Your most, &c, 
April 23, 1778. Sam. Johnson. 

TO JAMES ELPHINSTON 

10 Sir : 

Having myself suffered what you are now suffering, 
I well know the weight of your distress, how much need 
you have of comfort, and how little comfort can be 
given. A loss such as yours lacerates the mind, and 

15 breaks the whole system of purposes and hopes. It 
leaves a dismal vacuity in life, which affords nothing 
on which the affections can fix, or to which endeavor may 
be directed. All this I have known, and it is now, in 
the vicissitude of things, your turn to know it. 

20 But in the condition of mortal things, one must lose 
another. What would be the wretchedness of life, if 
there was not something always in view, some Being 
immutable and unfailing, to whose mercy man may 
have recourse. Tbv irpurov klvovvtcl atiivqTov. 

25 Here we must rest. The greatest Being is the most 
benevolent. We must not grieve for the dead as men 
without hope, because we know that they are in his 
hands. "We have indeed not leisure to grieve long, 
because we are hastening to follow them. Your race 

30 and mine have been interrupted by many obstacles, but 
we must humbly hope for an happy end. 
I am, Sir, 

Your most humble servant, 
July 27, 1778. Sam - Johnson. 



384 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

to james boswell 
Dear Sir: 

I hoped you had got rid of all this hypocrisy of 
misery. What have you to do with Liberty and Neces- 
sity? Or what more than to hold your tongue about 
it ? Do not doubt but I shall be most heartily glad 5 
to see you here again, for I love every part about you 
but your affectation of distress. 

I have at last finished my Lives, and have laid up for 
you a load of copy, all out of order, so that it will amuse 
you a long time to set it right. Come to me, my dear 10 
Bozzy, and let us be as happy as we can. We will 
go again to the Mitre, and talk old times over. 
I am, dear Sir, 

Yours affectionately, 

March 14, 1781. Sam. Johnson. 15 

TO MRS. THRALE 

London, April 9, 1781. 
Dearest Madam : 

That you are gradually recovering your tranquillity 
is the effect to be humbly expected from trust in God. 
Do not represent life as darker than it is. Your loss 20 
has been very great, but you retain more than almost 
any other can hope to possess. You are high in the 
opinion of mankind; you have children from whom 
much pleasure may be expected; and that you will find 
many friends, you have no reason to doubt. Of my 25 
friendship, be it worth more or less, I hope you think 
yourself certain, without much art or care. It will 
not be easy for me to repay the benefits that I have 
received; but I hope to be always ready at your call. 
Our sorrow has different effects ; you are withdrawn 30 
into solitude, and I am driven into company. I am 
afraid of thinking what I have lost. I never had such 
a friend before. Let me have your prayers and those - 
of my dear Queeney. 



LETTERS 385 

The prudence and resolution of your design to return 
so soon to your business and your duty deserves great 
praise; I shall communicate it on Wednesday to the 
other executors. Be pleased to let me know whether 
5 you would have me come to Streatham to receive you, 
or stay here till the next day. I am, &c. 

Sam. Johnson. 

to miss lucy porter, lichfield 

Dear Madam: 

I went away from Lichfield ill, and have had a trouble- 

10 some time with my breath ; for some weeks I have been 
disordered by a cold, of which I could not get the 
violence abated, till I had been let blood three times. 
I have not, however, been so bad but that I could have 
written, and am sorry that I neglected it. 

15 My dwelling is but melancholy; both Williams, and 
Desmoulins, and myself, are very sickly; Frank is not 
well; and poor Levett died in his bed the other day by 
a sudden stroke; I suppose not one minute passed be- 
tween health and death; so uncertain are human things. 

20 Such is the appearance of the world about me; I 
hope your scenes are more cheerful. But whatever be- 
falls us, though it is wise to be serious, it is useless 
and foolish, and perhaps sinful, to be gloomy. Let us, 
therefore, keep ourselves as easy as we can; though 

25 the loss of friends will be felt, and poor Levett had 
been a faithful adherent for thirty years. 

Forgive me, my dear love, the omission of writing; 
I hope to mend that and my other faults. Let me have 
your prayers. 

30 Make my compliments to Mrs. Cobb, and Miss Adey, 
and Mr. Pearson, and the whole company of my 
friends. 

I am, my dear, 

Your most humble servant, 

35 London, March 2, 1782. Sam. Johnson. 



386 SELECTIONS FRO 21 JOHNSON 

to sir joshua reynolds 
Dear Sir: 

I heard yesterday of your late disorder, and should 
think ill of myself if I had heard of it without alarm. 
I heard likewise of your recovery, which I sincerely 
wish to be complete and permanent. Your country has 5 
been in danger of losing one of its brightest ornaments, 
and I of losing one of my oldest and kindest friends; 
but I hope you will still live long, for the honor of 
the nation; and that more enjoyment of your elegance, 
your intelligence, and your benevolence, is still reserved 10 
for, dear Sir, your most affectionate, &c, 

Sam. Johnson. 

Brighthelmston, 
Nov. 14, 1782. 

TO SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS 

March 4, 1783. 15 
Sir: 

I have sent you back Mr. Crabbe's poem, which I 
read with great delight. It is original, vigorous, and 
elegant. 

The alterations which I have made I do not require 20 
him to adopt, for my lines are, perhaps, not often better 
[than] his own; but he may take mine and his own 
together, and perhaps between them produce something 
better than either. He is not to think his copy wantonly 
defaced ; a wet sponge will wash all the red lines away, 25 
and leave the pages clean. 

His Dedication will be least liked; it were better to 
contract it into a short, sprightly address. I do not 
doubt of Mr. Crabbe's success. 

I am, Sir, 30 

Your most humble servant, 

Sam. Johnson. 



LETTERS 387 

TO MRS. THRALE- 

London, Nov. 29, 1783. 
Dear Madam : 

The life of my dear, sweet, pretty, lovely, delicious 

Miss Sophy is safe; let us return thanks to the great 

5 Giver of existence, and pray that her continuance 

amongst us may be a blessing to herself and to those 

that love her. Multos et jelices, my dear girl. 

Now she is recovered, she must write me a little his- 
tory of her sufferings, and impart her schemes of study 
10 and improvement. Life, to be worthy of a rational 
being, must be always in progression; we must always 
purpose to do more or better than in times past. The 
mind is enlarged and elevated by mere purposes, though 
they end as they begin, by airy contemplation. We 
15 compare and judge, though we do not practise. 

She will go back to her arithmetic again; a science 
which will always delight her more, as by advancing 
further she discerns more of its use, and a science de- 
voted to Sophy's ease of mind; for you told in the last 
20 winter that she loved metaphysics more than romances. 
Her choice is certainly as laudable as it is uncommon; 
but I would have her like what is good in both. 
God bless you and your children; so says, 
Dear Madam, 
25 Your old Friend, 

Sam. Johnson. 

to the reverend dr. taylor, ashbourne, derbyshire 

Dear Sir: 

What can be the reason that I hear nothing from 
you? I hope nothing disables you from writing. What 
30 I have seen, and what I have felt, gives me reason to 
fear every thing. Do not omit giving me the comfort 
of knowing, that after all my losses I have yet a friend 
left. 



388 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

I want every comfort. My life is very solitary and 
very cheerless. Though it has pleased God wonderfully 
to deliver me from the dropsy, I am yet very weak, 
and have not passed the door since the 13th of Decem- 
ber. I hope for some help from warm weather, which 5 
will surely come in time. 

I could not have the consent of physicians to go to 
church yesterday; I therefore received the holy sacra- 
ment at home, in the room where I communicated with 
dear Mrs. Williams, a little before her death. ! my 10 
friend, the approach of death is very dreadful. I am 
afraid to think on that which I know I cannot avoid. 
It is vain to look round and round for that help which 
cannot be had. Yet we hope and hope, and fancy that 
he who has lived to-day may live to-morrow. But let 15 
us learn to derive our hope only from God. 

In the meantime let us be kind to one another. I 
have no friend now living but you and Mr. Hector, that 
was the friend of my youth. Do not neglect, dear Sir, 

Yours affectionately, 20 

Sam. Johnson. 
London, Easter Monday, 
April 12, 1784. 

to miss jane langton, rochester 

My Dearest Miss Jenny: 

I am sorry that your pretty letter has been so long 25 
without being answered; but, when I am not pretty 
well, I do not always write plain enough for young 
ladies. I am glad, my dear, to see that you write so 
well, and hope that you mind your pen, your book, and 
your needle, for they are all necessary. Your books 30 
will give you knowledge, and make you respected; and 
your needle will find you useful employment when you 
do not care to read. When you are a little older, I 
hope you will be very diligent in learning arithmetic, 




Johnson, as described in Boswell's Tour, drawn and etched by Trotter. 
1 He wore,' says Boswell, ' a full suit of plain brown clothes, with 
twisted hair-buttons of the same color, a large bushy, grayish wig, 
a plain shirt, black worsted stockings, and silver buckles. Upon this 
tour, when journeying, he wore boots, and a very wide brown cloth 
great-coat, with pockets which might have almost held the two volumes 
of his folio Dictionary , and he carried in his hand a large English 
oak stick.' On the journey the stick was lost. 



LETTERS 389 

and, above all, that through your whole life you will 
carefully say your prayers, and read your Bible. 
I am, my dear, 

Your most humble servant, 
5 Sam. Johxsox. 

May 10, 1784. 



TO MRS. THRALE 

London, July 8, 1784. 
Dear Madam: 

What you have done, however I may lament it, I 
10 have no pretence to resent, as it has not been injurious 
to me; I therefore breathe out one sigh more of tender- 
ness, perhaps useless, but at least sincere. 

I wish that Grod may grant you every blessing, that 
you may be happy in this world for its short continu- 
15 ance, and eternally happy in a better state: and what- 
ever I can contribute to your happiness I am very ready 
to repay, for that kindness which soothed twenty years 
of a life radically wretched. 

Do not think slightly of this advice which I now 

20 presume to offer. Prevail upon Mr. Piozzi to settle in 

England; you may live here with more dignity than 

in Italy, and with more security: your rank will be 

higher, and your fortune more under your own eye. 

I desire not to detail all my own reasons, but every 

25 argument of prudence and interest is for England, and 

only some phantoms of imagination seduce you to Italy. 

I am afraid, however, that my counsel is vain, yet 

I have eased my heart by giving it. 

When Queen Mary took the resolution of sheltering 

30 herself in England, the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, 

attempting to dissuade her, attended on her journey; 

and when they came to the irremeable stream that 

separated the two kingdoms, walked by her side into 



,390 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

the water, in the middle of which he seized her bridle, 
and with earnestness proportioned to her danger and 
his own affection pressed her to return. The Queen 
went forward. — If the parallel reaches thus far, may- 
it go no further. — The tears stand in my eyes. 5 

I am going into Derbyshire, and hope to be followed 
by your good wishes, for I am, with great affection, 

Your, &c, 

Sam. Johnson". 

Any letters that come for me hither will be sent me. 10 



to the lord high chancellor 

My Lord : 

After a long and .not inattentive observation of man- 
kind, the generosity of your Lordship's offer raises in 
me not less wonder than gratitude. Bounty, so liberally 
bestowed, I should gladly receive, if my condition made 15 
it necessary; for, to such a mind, who would not be 
proud to own his obligations? But it has pleased God 
to restore me to so great a measure of health, that 
if I should now appropriate so much of a fortune 
destined to do good, I could not escape from myself 20 
the charge of advancing a false claim. My journey to 
the continent, though I once thought it necessary, was 
never much encouraged by my physicians; and I was 
very desirous that your Lordship should be told of it 
by Sir Joshua Reynolds, as an event very uncertain ; 25 
for if I grew much better, I should not be willing, if 
much worse, not able, to migrate. Your Lordship 
was first solicited without my knowledge; but, when 
I was told that you were pleased to honor me with 
your patronage, I did not expect to hear of a refusal; 30 
yet, as I have had no long time to brood hope, and 
have not rioted in imaginary opulence, this cold recep- 
tion has been scarce a disappointment; and from your 



LETTERS 391 

Lordship's kindness I have received a benefit which only 
men like you are able to bestow. I shall now live 
mihi carlo r, with a higher opinion of my own merit. 
I am, my Lord, 
5 Your Lordship's most obliged. 

Most grateful, and 

Most humble servant, 
September, 1784. Sam. Johnson. 



TO DR. BURNEY IN ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LEICESTER FIELDS 

Mr. Johnson, who came home last night, sends his 
10 respects to dear Doctor Burney, and all the dear Bur- 
neys, little and great. 

Nov. 17, 1784. 



©racers an& ilRe&ttations 2 

April 25, 1752. 

Lord, our heavenly Father, almighty and most 
merciful God, in whose hands are life and death, who 
givest and takest away, castest down and raisest up, 
look with mercy on the affliction of thy unworthy 5 
servant, turn away thine anger from me, and speak 
peace to my troubled soul. Grant me the assistance and 
comfort of thy Holy Spirit, that I may remember with 
thankfulness the blessings so long enjoyed by me in 
the society of my departed wife ; make me so to think 10 
on her precepts and example, that I may imitate what- 
ever was in her life acceptable in thy sight, and avoid 
all by which she offended Thee. Forgive me, merciful 
Lord, all my sins, and enable me to begin and perfect 
that reformation which I promised her, and to persevere 15 
in that resolution which she implored Thee to continue, 
in the purposes which I recorded in thy sight, when 
she lay dead before me, in obedience to thy laws, and 
faith in thy word. And now, Lord, release me from 
my sorrow, fill me with just hopes, true faith, and 20 
holy consolations, and enable me to do my duty in that 
state of life to which Thou hast been pleased to call 
me, without disturbance from fruitless grief, or tumul- 

1 Prayers and Meditations is the name of a small book pub- 
lished by Johnson's friend Strahan less than eight months 
after his death. It contains a curious medley of prayers, 
memoranda, observations, and resolves, ranging from details 
of diet and notes on the growth of his nails to the agonized 
outcry of a penitent soul. 

These were written for his own use, without thought of 
publication, until the last year of his life, when, at his friends' 
importunity, he consented that they be given to the world. 
But sickness and death intervened to prevent the in- 
tended revision, and they stand as he first wrote them. 

392 



PRAYERS AND MEDITATIONS 393 

tuous imaginations; that in all my thoughts, words, and 
actions, I may glorify thy Holy Name, and finally 
obtain, what I hope Thou hast granted to thy departed 
servant, everlasting joy and felicity, through our Lord 
5 Jesus Christ. Amen. 

1758. 
Easter Day 

March 26. 
Almighty and most merciful Father, who hast created 
me to love and to serve Thee, enable me so to partake 
of the sacrament in which the death of Jesus Christ is 

10 commemorated, that- I may henceforward lead a new 
life in thy faith and fear. Thou, who knowest my 
frailties and infirmities, strengthen, and support me; 
grant me thy Holy Spirit, that, after all my lapses, 
I may now continue steadfast in obedience, that, after 

15 long habits of negligence and sin, I may, at last, work 
out my salvation with diligence and constancy; purify 
my thoughts from pollutions, and fix my affections on 
things eternal. Much of my time past has been lost in 
sloth; let not what remains, Lord, be given me in 

20 vain; but let me, from this time, lead a better life, 
and serve Thee with a quiet mind through Jesus Christ 
our Lord. Amen. 

1759. 

Jan. 23. 
The day on which my dear mother was buried. 
25 Repeated on my fast, with the addition. 

Almighty God, merciful Father, in whose hands are 
life and death, sanctify unto me the sorrow which I 
now feel. Forgive me whatever I have done unkindly to 
my mother, and whatever I have omitted to do kindly. 
30 Make me to remember her good precepts and good 
example, and to reform my life according to thy holy 
word, that I may lose no more opportunities of good. 



394 SELECTIONS FROM JOHNSON 

I am sorrowful, Lord ; let not my sorrow be without 
fruit. Let it be followed by holy resolutions, and lasting 
amendment, that when I shall die like my mother, I 
may be received to everlasting life. 

I commend, Lord, so far as it may be lawful, into 5 
thy hands, the soul of my departed mother, beseeching 
Thee to grant her whatever is most beneficial to her in 
her present state. 

Lord, grant me thy Holy Spirit, and have mercy 
upon me for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen. 10 

1767. 

Sunday, Oct. 18. 
Yesterday, Oct. 17, at about ten in the morning, I 
took my leave for ever of my dear old friend Catherine 
Chambers, who came to live with my mother about 1724, 
and has been but little parted from us since. She 15 
buried my father, my brother, and my mother. She 
is now fifty-eight years old. 

1 desired all to withdraw, then told her that we were 
to part for ever; that as Christians, we should part 
with prayer; and that I would, if she was willing, say 20 
a short prayer beside her. She expressed great desire 
to hear me; and held up her poor hands, as she lay in 
bed, with great fervor, while I prayed kneeling by her, 
nearly in the following words : 

Almighty and most merciful Father, whose loving 25 
kindness is over all thy works, behold, visit, and relieve 
this thy servant, who is grieved with sickness. Grant 
that the sense of her weakness may add strength to her 
faith, and seriousness to her repentance. And grant 
that by the help of thy Holy Spirit, after the pains 30 
and labors of this short life, we may all obtain ever- 
lasting happiness, through Jesus Christ our Lord: for 
whose sake hear our prayers. Amen. Our Father, &c. 

I then kissed her. She told me that to part was the 



PRAYERS AND MEDITATIONS 395 

greatest pain that she had ever felt, and that she hoped 
we should meet again in a better place. I expressed, 
with swelled eyes, and great emotion of tenderness, 
the same hopes. We kissed, and parted. I humbly 
5 hope to meet again, and to part no more. 

1769. 

September 18. 
This day completes the sixtieth year of my age. What 
I have done, and what I have left undone, the unsettled 
state of my mind makes all endeavors to think im- 
10 proper. I hope to survey my life with more tran- 
quillity, in some part of the time which God shall 
grant me. 

The last year has been wholly spent in a slow pro- 
gress of recovery. My days are easier, but the per- 
15 turbation of my nights is very distressful. I think to 
try a lower diet. I have grown fat too fast. My lungs 
seem encumbered, and my breath fails me, if my strength 
is in any unusual degree exerted, or my motion ac- 
celerated. I seem to myself to bear exercise with more 
20 difficulty than in the last winter. But though I feel 
all those decays of body, I have made no preparation 
for the grave. What shall I do to be saved? 

Almighty and most merciful Father, I now appear 
in thy presence, laden with the sins, and accountable 

25 for the mercies of another year. Glory be to Thee, 
God, for the mitigation of my troubles, and for the 
hope of health both of mind and body which Thou hast 
vouchsafed me. Most merciful Lord, if it seem good 
unto Thee, compose my mind, and relieve my diseases; 

30 enable me to perform the duties of my station, and 
so to serve Thee, as that, when my hour of departure 
from this painful life shall be delayed no longer, I 
may be received to everlasting happiness, for the sake 
of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 



396 SELECTIONS FBOM JOHNSON 

1773. 

January 1, mane IK 33m. 
Almighty God, by whose mercy my life has been yet 
prolonged to another year, grant that thy mercy may 
not be vain. Let not my years be multiplied to increase 
my guilt ; but as age advances, let me become more 5 
pure in my thoughts, more regular in my desires, and 
more obedient to thy laws. Let not the cares of the 
world distract me, nor the evils of age overwhelm me. 
But continue and increase thy loving kindness towards 
me ; and when Thou shalt call me hence, receive me 10 
to everlasting happiness, for the sake of Jesus Christ 
our" Lord. Amen. 

1777. 

( EASTER ) 

9na mane. 

I went to bed about two, had a disturbed night, though 
not so distressful as at some other times. 15 

Almighty and most merciful Father, who seest all 
our miseries, and knowest all our necessities, look down 
upon me, and pity me. Defend me from the violent 
incursions of evil thoughts, and enable me to form and 
keep such resolutions as may conduce to the discharge 20 
of the duties w T hich thy providence shall appoint me; 
and so help me by thy Holy Spirit, that my heart may 
surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found, 
and that I may serve Thee with pure affection and a 
cheerful mind. Have mercy upon me, God, have 25 
mercy upon me; years and infirmities oppress me, terror 
and anxiety beset me. Have mercy upon me, my Creator 
and my Judge. In all dangers protect me, in all per- 
plexities relieve and free me, and so help me by thy 
Holy Spirit, that I may now so commemorate the death 30 
of thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ, as that when this 
short and painful life shall have an end, I may, for 
his sake, be received to everlasting happiness. Amen, 



PEAYEBS AND MEDITATIONS 397 

1781. 

June 22. 
Almighty God, who art the giver of all good, en- 
able me to remember with due thankfulness the com- 
forts and advantages which I have enjoyed by the 
5 friendship of Henry Thrale, for whom, so far as is 
lawful, I humbly implore thy mercy in his present 
state. Lord, since Thou hast been pleased to call 
him from this world, look with mercy on those whom 
he has left; continue to succor me by such means as 
10 are best for me, and repay to his relations the kindness 
which I have received from him; protect them in this 
world from temptations and calamities, and grant them 
happiness in the world to come, for Jesus Christ's sake. 
Amen. 

15 [The following Prayer was composed and used by 
Doctor Johnson previous to his receiving the Sacrament 
of the Lord's Supper, on Sunday, December 5, 1784.] 

Almighty and most merciful Father, I am now, as 
to human eyes it seems, about to commemorate, for the 

20 last time, the death of thy Son Jesus Christ our Savior 
and Redeemer. Grant, Lord, that my whole hope 
and confidence may be in his merits, and thy mercy; 
enforce and accept my imperfect repentance; make this 
commemoration available to the confirmation of my 

25 faith, the establishment of my hope, and the enlarge- 
ment of my charity; and make the death of thy Son 
Jesus Christ effectual to my redemption. Have mercy 
upon me, and pardon the multitude of my offenses. 
Bless my friends; have mercy upon all men. Support 

30 me, by the grace of thy Holy Spirit, in the days of 
weakness, and at the hour of death; and receive me, at 
my death, to everlasting happiness, for the sake of Jesus 
Christ. Amen. 



NOTES 

The figures in heavy type refer to pages ; the others to lines. 
LONDON: A POEM 

Only those passages from Juvenal are here quoted of 
which Johnson's rendering is particularly happy. He 
adapts many a phrase from Dryden's translation of 
Juvenal, and from Pope and other poets. Juvenal is more 
abrupt, concrete, and lively than Johnson; Johnson is 
usually more general and weighty. There is no better 
commentary on Johnson's London than a folio of Hogarth's 
pictures. 

2. Thales is Johnson's friend Savage. Savage did not 
leave for Wales till fifteen months later, but his departure 
was for some time anticipated; see pp. 292, 295. 

8. St. David, patron saint of Wales. This couplet fol- 
lows Juvenal. He approves his friend's choice, 

Vacuis quod sedem figere Cumis 
Destinet atque unum civem donare Sibyllae. 

Cf. Pope's line {Moral Essays 3, 394), 

And one more Pensioner St. Stephen's gains ; 

and Dryden's rendering, 

And one more citizen to Sibyl gives. 

Briton. A popular term ever since the union with 
Scotland. Cf. 11. 26, 69, 101, 112, 119. Thomson's Rule 
Britannia! Britons never shall he slaves appeared in 1740, 
and in 1760 George III., in his first speech to Parliament, 
added to his already great popularity by the sentence: 
' Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name 

399 



400 NOTES 

of Briton! ' (Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, 
chap. 9 ) . The term was a favorite with Pope. 

9-14. Both Boswell and Dr. Hill have misread these 
lines as an expression of prejudice against Ireland and 
Scotland (Life 1. 130 and n. 1). Johnson's prejudice 
against Scotland is well known, but could never be in- 
ferred from these lines. 

14-17. See Hogarth, Industry and Idleness, XI. Four 
Times of Day — flight; Marriage a la Mode, I; Gin Lane. 

21-4. Twenty- five years later Boswell and Johnson 
spent an interesting day at Greenwich (Life 1. 457-62). 
Boswell carried in his pocket a copy of London, and read 
these four lines ' aloud with enthusiasm/ but seems to 
have drawn no comment from the author. 

29. Masquerades. The midnight masquerades were 
popular entertainments throughout the Eighteenth Century, 
except for short periods when they were repressed, Addi- 
son attacked them in The Spectator (No. 8, 1711), and 
Johnson in The Rambler (No. 10, 1750). A good con- 
temporary description of one is in The Guardian (No. 154, 
1713). See also W. C. Sydney, England and the English 
in the Eighteenth Century (1. 144-150). 

Excise. ' A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and 
adjudged not by the common judges of property, but 
wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid ' ( John- 
son's Dictionary, 1755). 'A duty charged on home goods, 
either in the process of their manufacture, or before their 
sale to the home consumers ' ( Encycl. Brit. ) . This tax 
was unpopular from its establishment by the Common- 
wealth in 1643 throughout the Eighteenth Century. See 
Burns' The De'iVs awa' with the Exciseman. Johnson 
refers to Walpole's attempt to use it iive years earlier as 
a means of relieving the distress that followed the South 
Sea failures. His policy had been masterly, but popular 
prejudice against excise was so strong that he had aban- 
doned the measure when it was all but passed, in one of 
the most striking scenes that ever took place in Parlia- 
ment. See Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, 
chap. 3, for an account of this and a brilliant portrait 
of Walpole. 



NOTES 401 

30. English honor. The increasing trade of Spain and 
England with the .New World (cf. 1. 173) had engendered 
disputes and rivalry that by this time threatened serious 
consequences. Popular resentment against Spain had 
grown very high through real and alleged injuries to 
English sailors, and the clamor for war rose throughout 
the nation. Walpole's policy was peace, but popular dis- 
content and the Opposition were so strong that war was 
soon declared, and Walpole's long and brilliant control of 
the government ended in 1741. In his Epilogue to the 
Satires (1738), Pope, who was twenty years older than 
Johnson, touched upon the same abuses, and represented 
England a captive of Vice (151-164). 

38. Science. ' Learning/ as often in earlier writers. 

45. Osiers. Johnson loved trees and vegetation; see p. 
xli. He called them ' The most pleasing part of nature \ 
(Plan). 'Were I a rich man, I would propagate all kinds 
of trees that will grow in the open air' (Life 2. 168). Cf. 
1. 216 and n. 

47. Briton. Here a ' Celt ' or ' Welshman.' 

49. Secret Cell. When Johnson and Boswell were at 
St. Andrews, the talk turned upon religious asceticism. 
' Mr. Nairne said he had an inclination to retire. I called 
Dr. Johnson's attention to this that I might hear his 
opinion if it was right. Johnson. " Yes, when he has 
done his duty to society. In general, as every man is 
obliged not only to s love God, but his neighbor as himself/ 
he must bear his part in active life; yet there are ex- 
ceptions. . . . Those who cannot resist temptations, and 
find they make themselves worse by being in the world, 
without making it better, may retire. I never read of 
a hermit, but in imagination I kiss his feet; never of a 
monastery, but I could fall on my knees, and kiss the 
pavement. But I think putting young people there who 
know nothing of life, nothing of retirement, is dangerous 
and wicked. ... I have thought of retiring, and have 
talked of it to a friend; but I find my vocation is rather 
to active life'" (Life 5. 62,3). The same opinion is set 
forth in chapters 21 and 47 of Rasselas. 

51. Pensions. ' An allowance made to any one without 



402 NOTES 

an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to 
mean pay given to a state hireling, for treason to his 
country' (Johnson's Dictionary, 1755). Literature had 
been wisely patronized under Queen Anne, but Walpole 
and his successors used the pension as a means of corrup- 
tion; this must have increased Johnson's hatred of patron- 
age. He defines 'pensioner' as 'A slave of state hired by 
a stipend to obey his master.' Seven years later, after 
the accession of George III., when Johnson's pension was 
offered him, he hesitated to accept it, partly on account 
of these definitions. But Sir Joshua Reynolds assured 
him they were not applicable to him, and Lord Bute, the 
Prime Minister, said plainly, ' It is not given you for 
anything you are to do, but for what you have done.' 
Thus his hesitation was overcome. 

51-6. This "most spirited invective against tyranny and 
oppression,' as Bos well calls it, was quite consistent with 
Johnson's Toryism. From 1722 to 1742 Sir Robert Wal- 
pole and the Whigs controlled the government, and main- 
tained a powerful ring by the avoidance of war and a 
system of ingenious corruption through places, pensions, 
and the like. It had now continued so long as to become 
an object of suspicion and fear. What then is more 
natural than sentiments like these from a Tory in op- 
position? It is an old saying that a Tory out of place 
is a Whig. ' Great sums of secret service money were 
usually expended in direct bribery, and places and pensions 
were multiplied to such an extent that it is on record that 
out of 550 members there were in the first Parliament 
of George I. no less than 271, in the first Parliament of 
George II., no less than 257, holding offices, pensions, or 
sinecures. And the body which was thus constituted was 
rapidly becoming supreme in the State ' ( Lecky, England 
in the Eighteenth Century, chap. 4). 

54. Pirates. Spaniards. Spain had justly claimed the 
right of searching English vessels for violations of the 
trade-treaty with England, but she was sometimes actually, 
sometimes supposedly, guilty of violence to English sailors. 
A notorious case was that of Jenkins, who exhibited in 
Parliament one of his ears carefully r reserved in a box, 



NOTES 403 

which he said had been cut off by Spaniards. It roused 
the English to tremendous fury against Spain, but there 
seems to be some doubt whether Jenkins ever lost an ear, 
or, if he did, that the Spaniards severed it. Johnson refers 
to the attempts of Walpole in Parliament to explode these 
rumors and maintain peace. 

ob. Chesterfield, the enemy of Walpole, says of him: 
' He laughed at and ridiculed all notions of public virtue, 
and the love of one's country, calling them " the chimerical 
school-boy flights of classical learning " ; declaring himself 
at the same time, " no saint, no Spartan, no reformer." 
He would frequently ask young fellows, at their first ap- 
pearance in the world, while their honest hearts were yet 
untainted: " Well, are you to be an old Roman? a patriot? 
You will soon come off of that, and grow wiser " ' ( W. 
Ernst, Life of Chesterfield, p. 246). 

58. Lottery. With the increase of wealth the instinct 
for gambling grew strong in the Eighteenth Century and 
was encouraged by state patronage of lotteries. The Gov- 
ernment resorted to this means of raising money: West- 
minster Bridge was built with the proceeds of a lottery; 
the collection of manuscripts known as the Harleian and 
Cottonian were thus purchased for the British Museum; 
even in America the practice was common, and at Yale Col- 
lege, Connecticut Hall was in part paid for by the same 
means. The abuses were enormous and thousands of people 
with limited means were caught in the excitement and 
ruined. The Rambler (Xos. 181,2) attacks lotteries as 
The Tatler (Xo. 124) and The Spectator (So. 191) had 
done in somewhat milder tone. See Sydney, England and 
the English in the Eighteenth Century 1. 222-29. 

59. Licensed Stage. The famous Licensing Act intended 
to regulate and restrict the stage, especially from attacks 
on the government, was passed the year before, and was, 
of course, the work of Walpole. See W. Nicholson, The 
Struggle for a Free Stage in London. 

62. The great and sudden increase of wealth in England 
during the Eighteenth Century was due largely to the 
development of her colonies. 

69. Who scarce (forbear. Alluding to the episode nar- 



404 NOTES 

rated below, on pp. 266-68. Johnson expressed his con-| 
tempt for Cibber's verse and George II. 's lack of taste in 
an epigram: 

Great George's acts let tuneful Cibber sing ; 
For Nature formed the Poet for the King. 

— (Life 1. 149.) 

70. Titled poet. See below, p. 268 : ' Savage did not think 
any title which was conferred upon Mr. Cibber so honor- 
able as that the usurpation of it could be imputed to him 
as an instance of very exorbitant vanity.' This leaves no 
doubt that Savage and Cibber are meant. 

72. Gazetteer. ' 1. A writer of news. 2. It was lately a 
term of the utmost infamy, being usually applied to 
wretches who were hired to vindicate the Court' (Dic- 
tionary, 1755). The Court newspaper, the Gazette, was 
proverbially dull. Pope also refers to its editors, Epilogue 
to Satires 2. 226, 7 : 

All, all but Truth, drops still-born from the press, 
Like the last Gazette. . . . 

86. Marlborough. ' That is now no longer doubted, of 
which the nation was then first informed, that the war 
was unnecessarily protracted to fill the pockets of Marl- 
borough, and that it would have been continued without 
end if he could have continued his annual plunder ' ( John- 
son, Life of Swift, §46, cited by Hales). 

91. 'His (Johnson's) unjust contempt for foreigners 
was, indeed, extreme. One evening, at old Slaughter's 
coffee-house, when a number of them were talking loud 
about little matters, he said, " Does not this confirm old 
Meynell's observation — ' For anything I see, foreigners are 
fools '? " ' [Life 4. 15) . ' The prejudices he had to countries 
did not extend to individuals. ... In respect to French- 
men he rather laughed at himself, but it was insurmount- 
able ' (Sir Joshua Reynolds in Misc. 2. 226). 

94. On Frenchmen in London see Hogarth, Four Times 
of Day — Noon; Rake's Progress II. The abuse of for- 
eigners, particularly the French, represented a mob senti- 



NOTES 405 

ment; see contemporary accounts in Sydney, England in 
the Eighteenth Century 2. 193. 

98. Cf. Juv. 10. 59: 

Non possum ferre, Quirites, 
Grsecam urbem. 

99. Edicard III., whose reign, 1327-77, covered the first 
forty years of the Hundred Years' War against France. 
He was the brilliant hero at Crecy in 1346, and his son, 
the Black Prince, at Poitiers in 1356. Johnson selects Ed- 
ward III. and Henry V. (1. 120) as the best examples of 
England's former superiority to France. Ten years later, 
on beginning the Dictionary, he playfully used himself as 
an example : ' Johnson. " Sir, I have no doubt I can do it 
in three years/' Adams. " But the French Academy, which 
consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their 
Dictionary." Johnson. " Sir, thus it is. This is the pro- 
portion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. 
As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an 
Englishman to a Frenchman"' (Life 1. 186). 

104. In 1746 Hogarth in his picture of the March to 
Finchley showed the demoralization of the British soldier 
in another respect. 

115-6. Juvenal has: 

Omnia novit, 
Grseculus esuriens : in coelum jusseris, ibit. 

Dryden renders, 

All things the hungry Greek exactly knows, 
And bid him go to heaven, to heaven he goes. 

120. Henry's victories. At Agincourt, 1415, and through- 
out Normandy, 1417-19. Like many a youngster, Johnson may 
have first learned to ' lisp this tale ' from Shakespeare's 
plays on Henry IV. and Henry V. In his General Ob- 
servations on Shakespeare's Plays he says : ' None of 
Shakespeare's plays are more read than the First and 
Second Parts of Henry IV. Perhaps no author has ever 
in two plays afforded so much delight.' And of Prince 
Hal : ' When the occasion forces out his latent qualities, 



406 NOTES 

he is great without effort, and brave without tumult. . . . 
This character is great, original, and just.' When he 
visited the theatre at Versailles, he playfully proposed 
that they act 'Harry the Fifth' (Misc. 1. 216). 

122. 1st Ed.: And ivhat their armies lost, their cringes 
gain. 

131. Aivkioard flattery. Pope has ' awkward vanity ' 
( Essay on Crit. 329 ; ' awkward shame ' ( Epil. Sat. 
1. 135); 'awkward pride' (Mor. Essays 4. 19). Cf. 
' Awkward and supple each devoir to pay' (Macer 17). 

140-4. In Juvenal (100-104): 

Rides, majore cachinno 
Concutitur ; flet, si lacrimas conspexit amici, 
Nee dolet ; igniculum brumse si tempore poscas, 
Accipit endromidem ; si dixeris * sestuo,' sudat. 

Which Dryden renders in part (175-179), 

Call for a fire, their winter clothes they take ; 
Begin you but to shiver and they shake ; 
In frost and snow if you complain of heat ; 
They rub the unsweating brow, and swear they sweat. 

Johnson is more condensed than either. 

162. Johnson has omitted Juvenal's reference to the 
worn-out shoes (149): 

Si toga sordidula est et rupta calceus alter 
Pelle patet, vel si consuto vulnere crassum 
Atque recens linum ostendit non una cicatrix? 

Dryden (254), 

Or. if the shoe be ripped, or patches put, — 
1 He's wounded ! See the plaster on his foot ! ■ 

Johnson must have remembered his own experience at 
Christ Church College, Oxford, whither he went from 
Pembroke, to get Bateman's lectures from his friend Tay- 
lor, ( till his poverty being so extreme that his shoes were 
worn out and his feet appeared through them, he saw that 
this humiliating circumstance was perceived by the Christ 
Church men, and he came no more. He was too proud to 
accept of money, and somebody having set a pair of new 



NOTES 407 

shoes at his door, he threw them away with indignation' 
{Life 1. 76 f.). 
166-9. Cf. Juv. 3. 152: 

Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se, 
Quam quod ridiculos homines facit. 

177. A fine condensation of Juvenal's: 

Haut facile emergunt, quorum virtutibus opstat 
Res angusta domi ; 

assisted by Dryden's 11. 275, 6, 

Rarely they rise by virtue's aid, who lie 
Plunged in the depth of helpless poverty ; 

and perhaps 1. 271, 

The poor were wise, who, by the rich oppressed. 

182-213. This passage was composed with the eye more 
on Juvenal than on his own times. 

208. On corrupt elections see Hogarth's amusing series 
of four plates, The Election, and note on 11. 51-6. 

208-10. Juvenal has (220ff.) : 

Meliora ac plura reponit 
Persicus orborum lautissimus et merito jam 
Suspectus, tamquam ipse suas incenderit sedes. 

But Johnson is nearer Dryden in sound (359-362) : 

Childless Arturius, vastly rich before, 
Thus, by his losses, multiplies his store ; 
Suspected for accomplice to the fire, 
That burnt his palace but to build it higher. 

210-23. On Johnson's view of life in the country see 
Adventurer, £so. 102, p. 182, below. 

215. Dungeons of the Strand. Possibly the dilapidated 
houses that constituted Butcher's Row, just behind the 
Church of St. Clement Danes. The space has since been 
cleared. 

216. The love of gardens and gardening, says Lecky, 
' forms one of the most remarkable features in the history 
of national tastes during the first half of the eighteenth 



i 



408 NOTES 

century' (England in the Eighteenth Century, chap. 5, 
near beginning). The formal French and Italian garden- 
ing, with precise symmetry and trees fantastically carved, 
gave way to more natural gardening in Pope's time. See 
' his clever picture in Moral Essays 4, and his skit in The 
Guardian, No. 173. Addison also condemns the formal 
style in Spectator, Nos. 414, 477. There are many refer- 
ences to gardening and vegetation throughout both the 
Life and the writings of Johnson. See 1. 45, n. 

228. ' He told me himself that one night he was at- 
tacked in the street by four men, to whom he would not 
yield, but kept them all at bay till the watch came up, 
and carried both him and them to the round-house ' ( Life 
2. 299 ) . Johnson no doubt had conversation with thieves 
and beggars, among whom he spent more than one homeless 
night at this time. Shenstone in 1743, writes that pick- 
pockets are growing bold enough ' to knock people down 
with bludgeons in Fleet Street and the Strand, and that at 
no later hour than eight o'clock at night ' (Life 1. 163, n. 2, 
cited by Hill). See Savage, p. 281. 

230. Heroes: The notorious 'Mohocks' of Addison's 
time had now been extinct for ten years, but they had 
their successors in disorder who bullied the watch, abused 
pedestrians, and created midnight terror for the unpro- 
tected. 

232. A reminiscence of Milton (P.L. 1. 500-2): 

When night 
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons 
Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine. 

242. Tyburn. The place of execution, near the present 
Marble Arch, until 1787. Criminals were carted thither 
more than two miles from Newgate Prison, and crowds 
followed the spectacle to its gloomy conclusion. See Ho- 
garth, Industry and Indolence, Plate XI. As there were 
many more than one hundred capital offenses, the execu- 
tions were frequent. ' In 1732 seventy persons received 
sentence of death at the Old Bailey.' See Lecky, England 
in the Eighteenth Century, chap. 4, near end. Johnson 
was one of the great number to plead for a reform of the 
penal code. See Rambler, No. 114. 



NOTES 409 

243. Fleet. The abuses on a man-of-war were still so 
great that the press-gang was a necessary means of man- 
ning the fleet. Smollett, who had witnessed them first- 
hand, paints them vividly in Roderick Random. Johnson 
always had a horror of the life at sea. ' Xo man will be 
a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a 
jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance 
of being drowned.' ' A man in a jail has more room, better 
food, and commonly better company' {Life 1. 348). See 
passage quoted on p. xxxvi. 

247. Another convoy. George II. gained no popularity 
by his frequent visits to Hanover. His English subjects 
suspected him of using English troops and resources to the 
advantage of his Hanoverian possessions. 

248. A single goal. From Juvenal (312 ff. ) : 

Felices proavorum atavos, felicia dicas 

Ssecula, quge quondam sub regibus atque tribunis 

Viderunt uno contentam carcere Roman. 

The stories of money and jewels left untouched in the 
highway when Alfred was King had created the tradition 
that his reign was the golden age of England. My col- 
league, Professor Wardlaw Miles, cites Hearne's Life of 
Alfred, 1709, pp. 114-15, which Johnson doubtless had read. 
Johnson was always interested in Alfred and in English 
antiquities. Cf. Introd., p. xl. Some nine years later 
(1746) 'a favorite object which he had in contemplation' 
was a Life of Alfred, ' in which, from the warmth with 
which he spoke about it, he would, . . . had he been 
master of his own will, have engaged himself, rather than 
on any other subject ' {Life 1. 177). 

251. 1st Ed.: Sustained the balance, but resigned the 
sword. 

262,3. Juvenal (321,2) : 



Saturarum ego, ni pudet illas, 
Adjutor gelidos veniam caligatus in agros. 



Dry den : 



Then to assist your satires, I will come, 
And add new venom when you write of Rome. 



410 NOTES 

THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES 

1, 2. Apparently the following quotations all influenced 
this couplet: 

Omnibus in terris, quae sunt a Gadibus usque 
Auroram et Gangen, pauci dinoscere prosunt 
Vera bona, etc. — Juv. 10. 1, 2. 

Look round the habitable world, how few 
Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue. 

— Dryden's Translation. 

The wonders of each region view 
From frozen Lapland to Peru. 

— Jexyxs, Ep. to Lovelace. 

Come, Contemplation, whose unbounded gaze 
Swift in a glance the course of things surveys. 

— Savage, The Wanderer. 

The couplet has been criticized by Byron as ' heavy and 
useless,' and by DeQuincey for tautology. Though not 
tautological, it is labored. 

6. Maze. From Juvenal's ' bona atque illis multum 
di versa, remota Error is nebula.' 

10. Airy. 'Without reality' (Johnson's Diet.), a 
favorite word. 

17-20. These lines anticipate the instances mentioned 
later in the poem. Villiers, Wentworth, and Hyde, were 
impeached, and Harley turned out of office. Of these Went- 
worth and Hyde were good speakers. Johnson probably 
recalls Denham's On the Earl of Strafford's Trial and 
Death. 

18. Juv. 10.9: ' Torrens dicendi; copia multis. Et sua 
mortifera est facundia.' The Eighteenth Century marked 
the florescence of English oratory. Within five years 
Johnson had been writing up the parliamentary debates. 

21. The knowing and the bold, ie., the well-instructed, 
and the courageous and magnanimous (cf. Johnson's Diet.) 
fall victims of the plague of avarice. On the increase of 
wealth in the Eighteenth Century see London 62, n. 

31. Refuse of the sword. Cf. Addison's Campaign 192 
(cited by Payne) : 

The few surviving foes dispersed in flight 
(Refuse of swords, and gleanings of a fight), 



NOTES 411 

34. ' Bonny traitor' (1st Ed.) shows that Johnson had 
in mind the supporters of the young Pretender in the 
famous '45. Johnson used to recite ' with great energy ' 
some verses on the Highland lords who were executed in 
that attempt {Life 1. 180). 'It was a noble attempt' 
said Johnson in 1777 (Life 3. 162). As to his Jacobite 
sentiments, Boswell is probably right when he says : ' He 
no doubt had an early attachment to the House of Stuart; 
but his zeal had cooled as his reason strengthened' [Life 
1. 430). See Introduction, p. liii. 

45, 46. The figure, obscurely expressed, is that of hunt- 
ing dogs. ' Tainted ' means merely ' scented.' Thomson, 
Autumn (1730), 363 ff. (quoted in Johnson's Diet.). 

The spaniel struck 
Stiff by the tainted gale, with open nose, 
Jutstretched and finely sensible, draws full, 
Fearful, and cautious, on the latent prey. 

48. Gaping heir. * Alluding to Frederick Prince of 
Wales' (Payne). He was for many years in violent op- 
position to his father, but he ' gaped ' for the succession in 
vain, as George II. survived him nine years. 

49-58. Democritus, ' the laughing philosopher,' of the 
Fifth Century B.C. Johnson follows Juv. 10. 34-40. Payne 
cites Prior (Democritus and Heraclitus) : 

Democritus, dear Droll, revisit earth. 

54. Conceit. ' Opinion, generally in a sense of contempt ; 
. . . fantastical notion' (Johnson's Diet.). 

57. Mock-debate. Under parliamentary conditions de- 
scribed in London 51, note, debate was often perfunctory 
and superfluous, since the Government had already made 
up its mind. 

58. Mayor's unwieldy state. See Hogarth, Industry and 
Idleness, Plate XII. 

73-80. It is likely that Johnson's experience of waiting 
in Chesterfield's outer rooms or being repulsed from his 
door had taken place shortly before this. See 26. 23, n. 

83. See essay on portraits, p. 195. 

93, 4. Xo more remonstrance rings, As at the Puritan 



412 NOTES 

Eevolution and the Revolution of 1688. For Johnson's 
opinions on resistance to unjust rule see Introduction, p. 
liv. 

97. Weekly libels. See 1. 81. 

Septennial ale. The Septennial Act, lengthening the 
term of Parliament from three to seven years had been 
passed in 1716, 'by the instigation of Whiggism ' (Addi- 
son, p. 341). Johnson means the ale that was freely 
poured out every seven years by candidates during their 
campaigns. See Hogarth, Election, Plate I., one of his 
most vivid portrayals, where he shows an election dinner 
in riotous progress at a country inn. In his Dictionary 
under ' septennial/ Johnson quotes this couplet as 
4 Anonym.' 

99. Full-blown. Johnson cites in his Dictionary Den- 
ham's Sophy, which may have suggested the epithet here: 

My glories are past danger ; they're full-blown, 

In Shakespeare's Henry Till. Act 3, Sc. 2, Wolsey says: 

My high-blown pride at length broke under me, 

99-116. These lines are obviously a review of two scenes 
in Shakespeare's Henry VIII. — Act 2, Sc. 4, and Act 3, 
Sc. 2. 

109. His sovereign froivns. At his fall occurs this stage 
direction: 'Exit King, frowning upon Cardinal Wolsey; 
the Nobles throng after him smiling and whispering.' 
Wolsey says: 

What should this mean? 
What sudden anger's this? How have I reaped it? 
He parted frowning from me, as if ruin 
Leaped from his eyes. . . . 



I have touched the highest point of all my greatness ; 
I haste now to my setting ; I shall fall 
Like a bright exhalation in the evening, 
And no man see me more. 

At this point appear certain of the court who insult him; 



NOTES 413 

and at the close of the scene he utters the words which 
were really spoken on his deathbed: 

Had I but served my God with half the zeal 
I served my King, he would not in mine age 
Have left me naked to mine enemies. 

114. The canopy is seen in Henry VIII., Act 1, Sc. 4, and 
in 3. 2. 125 are mentioned 

The several parcels of his plate, his treasure, 
Rich stuffs, and ornaments of household. 

124. 1st Ed.: The richest landlord on the banks, etc. 

129. Villiers. George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, 
1628-1687. Favorite and companion of James I. and 
Charles I. and an infatuated plunger in public affairs. 
Public rage and fear ended in his assassination. By ' great ' 
Johnson must mean merely ; exalted.' 

130. Barley. Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford, 1661- 
1724. Leader of the Tories 1710-1712; his life was at- 
tempted in 1711; he was impeached 1717, and dismissed 
from Court. 

131. Wentworth. Sir Thomas Wentworth, first Earl of 
Strafford, 1593-1641, and Charles I.'s greatest statesman and 
adviser in his struggle with the Puritans. At the height 
of the struggle a bill of attainder was passed against him 
by Parliament, on discovering a Court plot to rescue him, 
and in fear of the mob Charles consented to it. Accord- 
ingly Wentworth was executed. 

Hyde. Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon, 1609-1674. 
Royalist, statesman, and chief adviser of Charles II. from 
1651, through the Restoration (1660), till 1667, when he 
fell ; pursued by the hatred of Parliament, he fled to France, 
where he died. 

135-164. ' When Dr. Johnson read his own satire, in 
which the life of a scholar is painted, with the various 
obstructions thrown in his way to fortune and fame, he 
burst into a passion of tears one day. The family and 
Mr. Scott only were present, who, in a jocose way, clapped 
him on the back, and said : " What's all this, my dear sir ? 
Why you and I, and Hercules, you know, were all troubled 



414 NOTES 

with melancholy." ... He was a very large man, how- 
ever, and made out the triumvirate with Johnson and 
Hercules comically enough. The Doctor was so delighted 
at his odd sally, that he suddenly embraced him, and the 
subject was immediately changed' {Misc. 1. 180). 

138. At Boswell's instance Johnson had desired him to 
substitute ' burns ' for the earlier reading ' spreads ' ( cf . 
1.139), 'but for perfect authenticity, I now had it done 
with his own hand. I thought this alteration not _ only 
cured the fault, but was more poetical, as it might carry 
an allusion to the shirt by which Hercules was " in- 
named " ' {Life 3. 358). 

139. Bodley's dome. The Bodleian Library is the Uni- 
versity Library at Oxford. ' Dome ' ( domus ) is denned ' a 
building; a house; a fabric/ in Johnson's Diet. 

140. Bacon's mansion. A cell in an old tower on Folly 
Bridge, Oxford, said to have been built by Friar (Roger) 
Bacon in the thirteenth century, and so arranged by his 
magic art that it would fall on the head of any man more 
learned than himself who should pass beneath it. It was 
standing in Johnson's time. Mansion (mansio, maneo) is 
denned 'place of residence; abode; house,' in Johnson's 
Diet. 

141-160. Much of this passage is autobiographical. For 
Johnson's penetrating curiosity, expressed in 11. 143-6, see 
Introduction. LI. 147-52 refer to temptations to which he 
was peculiarly susceptible. 

145,6. From Pope, Essay on Grit. 211, 12: 

If one right reason drives that cloud away 
Truth breaks upon us with resistless day. 

150. 1st Ed.: And Sloth's bland opiates shed their fumes 
in vain. 

154. Melancholy's phantoms. ( " I inherited," said he 
" a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me 
mad all my life, at least not sober"' {Life 5. 215). Less 
than three years before he died he wrote : e My health has 
been, from my twentieth year, such as has seldom afforded 
me a single day of ease' {Life 4. 147). Johnson was a 
man, however, of enormous muscular strength. 



NOTES 415 

155, 6. When Boswell once observed, apropos of these 
lines, that ' things were done upon the supposition of hap- 
piness/ Johnson answered, ' Alas, Sir, these are all only 
struggles for happiness. When I first entered Ranelagh, it 
gave an expansion and gay sensation to my mind, such as I 
never experienced anywhere else. But, as Xerxes wept 
when he viewed his immense army, and considered that not 
one of that great multitude would be alive a hundred 
years afterwards, so it went to my heart to consider that 
there was not one in all that brilliant circle, that was 
not afraid to go home and think; but that the thoughts of 
each individual there, would be distressing when alone ' 
{Life 3. 199). 

158. Pause awhile from letters to be icise. Johnson 
ever urged upon scholars and literary men their need of 
mingling with the world. See pp. xxx, 32; also 129. 3 ff. 

160. Toil, envy, want, etc. A similar enumerating verse 
is 76. The stylistic trait is also Juvenal's — ' Praetexta, et 
trabeae, fasces, lectica, tribunal' (10.35; also 64). Patron 
was submitted for garret after Johnson's refusal to 
dedicate the Dictionary to Chesterfield. His definition 
of ' patron ' is, in part, ' commonly a wretch who supports 
with insolence, and is paid with flattery.' 

162. Tardy bust. Said to refer to the erection of Mil- 
ton's bust in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey, in 
1737; and of Butler's monument (d. 1680) in 1740. 

164. Lydiat. An English mathematician and Royalist 
(1572-1646) who was twice imprisoned by the Round- 
heads and died in misery. 

Galileo. 1564-1642. For his astronomical discoveries and 
theories he was attacked continually by the Inquisition for 
twenty years. In 1633 he became its prisoner for the 
rest of his life. During this period, however, he was al- 
lowed to pursue his studies. He went blind five years be- 
fore he died. 

168. Laud. Though a learned man, Archbishop Laud 
was not preeminent in an age which so excelled in learning 
as his own. Johnson's high church sentiments are here 
evident, as well as his resentment against the Puritans, who 
defied Laud's attempts to enforce liturgical conformity. 



416 NOTES 

More than once the mob rose against him, and once at- 
tacked his palace. In 1641 he was imprisoned, his rents 
' sequestered ' ( confiscated ) , and his palace searched for 
private papers. He was executed in 1644. 

177. Gazette. See London 72, n. 

179. Greek. Alexander the Great. 

182. Danube. Blenheim, the scene of Marlborough's most 
famous victory (1704) is in the valley of the Danube. He 
had conducted less brilliant but successful campaigns along 
the lower Rhine and the Meuse in 1702-3. 

185. Reason froions. Johnson often expressed his dislike 
of war. See Introduction, p. 1. This war of the Span- 
ish Succession (1701-1713) was fought between Eng- 
land, Austria, and Holland, on the one side, and France 
and Spain, on the other. The subject of dispute was 
the succession of Philip V., grandson of Louis XIV., to the 
throne of Spain. The ' single name ' may be Marlborough ; 
see London 86, n. 

But Johnson may now refer also to the War of the 
Austrian Succession (1740-48) just terminated, which he 
reviews in 11. 241-54. See notes. 

192. ISivedish Charles. Charles XII., born in 1682. At 
eighteen he renounced all pleasures and private alliances 
to devote himself to war against the enemies of Sweden. 
He expelled the Danes, overran Poland and Saxony, and 
began his march towards Moscow, but was defeated, after 
a frightful winter, at Pultowa. For five years he was a 
refugee in Turkey. He returned to defend Sweden against 
the powers that planned her dismemberment, and fell while 
besieging Fredrikshall on the coast of Norway. This por- 
trait of Charles has, with much justice, proved the favorite 
passage of the poem. Johnson's main outlines were de- 
rived from Voltaire's Histoire de Charles XII. Johnson 
once meditated a tragedy on the subject (Letters 1. 11). 

193. Frame of adamant. Voltaire (Book TrTT ' v t^Us 
how he slept on the ground in his cloak when others were 
dying of cold; how he went five days without food or 
drink, and on the sixth rode six miles without breaking 
his fast. 6 Avec ce corps de fer, gouverne par une ame si 
hardie et si inebranlable, dans quelque etat qu'il put etre 



NOTES 417 

reduit, il n'avait point de voisin auquel il ne fut redou- 
table.' 

195. 1st Ed.: O'er love, or force, extends, etc. 

200. One capitulate. Charles IV., of Denmark. One 
resign. Augustus II. of Poland. 

203. Gothic. Teutonic, Germanic. 

214. Ladies interpose. Not mentioned by Voltaire. 
Johnson may have misunderstood his use of ' serail ' 
designating the Sultan's Court, and taken it to mean 
' seraglio.' 

Slaves. The political intriguers for the death or the re- 
lease of Charles while in Turkey. 

220. Dubious hand. It was doubted whether the shot 
came from the enemy or an assassin. Voltaire does not 
mention this. 

224. Persia's tyrant; Bavaria's lord. Xerxes is an 
example from Juvenal. Charles Albert is a corresponding 
modern instance. Why Johnson did not content himself 
with ' Bavaria's lord,' and omit Xerxes, is not clear. 

228. Starves exhausted regions. Juv. 10. 176-8. 

Credimus altos 
Defecisse amnes epotaque flumina Medo 
Prandente. 

229. Counts his myriads. Xerxes counted his fighters 
ten thousand at a time, and found he had more than two 
million (Herodotus 7. 61 fT. ). 

232. The reverse of Juvenal; cf. Dryden's version (290) : 

Who whipped the winds, and made the sea his slave. 

' This does very well/ said Johnson, ' when both the winds 
and the sea are personified, and mentioned by their mytho- 
logical names, as in Juvenal; but when they are mentioned 
in plain language, the application of the epithets suggested 
by me is the most obvious' [Life 2. 228). In the Preface 
to the Dictionary he has, however, ' to enchain syllables, 
and lash the wind' (53.19). 

236. Heap their vallies. The famous fight of Leonidas 
and his Spartans in the pass of Thermopylae. 



418 NOTES 

237-40. Th' insulted sea, etc., Juv. 10. 185, 6: 

Sed qualis rediit? Nempe una nave, cruentis 
Fluctibus ac tarda per densa cadavera prora. 

239-40. Johnson told Mrs. Thrale that this was his 
favorite couplet of all his own poetry ( Misc. 2. 422 ) . 

241. Bavarian. Charles Albert, Elector of Bavaria, who, 
with little other claim than his ambition, contended with 
Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary, for the crown of the 
Empire in the war of the Austrian Succession (cf. 185 n.). 
The war involved nearly all Europe. Charles was allied 
with Frederick the Great, France, Spain, Saxony, and 
Poland, nearly all of whom violated their previous recogni- 
tion of Maria Theresa's claim in the Pragmatic Sanction. 
Hence their legions were treacherously ' unexpected,' and 
Bohemia at once fell undefended into Charles' hands. The 
queen at length gained England and Holland as allies, but 
in her first despair fell back upon the loyalty of Hungary. 
At Pressburg she called an assembly. Arrayed in Hun- 
garian costume, wearing the crown and the sword, she ap- 
peared before her nobles with her infant son in her arms, 
and appealed to them as her last resource: * In your hands 
I lay the daughter and the son of your Kings; they await 
your succor.' Her beauty and courage were irresistible; 
they arose and shouted : ' Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria 
Theresa ! ' ( ( Let us die for our King, Maria Theresa ! ' ) . 
With her wild but effective band of Hungarians, Croatians, 
and Tyrolese, she overran Bavaria in 1743. Charles got 
himself hastily crowned Emperor, but was driven from his 
capital, Munich. The next year he was reinstated, but in 
1745 he died, crushed with his struggle, and worn out with 
pain and disease. His imperial authority was insulted in 
the year of his death. Cf. Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XV., 
chap. 14. 

246. Cf . Marlowe's Faustus, Sc. 14 : 

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, 
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? 

Doubtless Johnson never read Marlowe. 

248. This was one of the most confused, cruel, and 
apparently futile wars of modern history. Nearly every 



NOTES 419 

participant entered the struggle with the object of stealing 
territory. Lecky sums up the one year 1744 thus: 
1 Bohemia, Bavaria, the Austrian Netherlands, and Italy, 
had been desolated by hostile forces. Tens of thousands of 
lives had been sacrificed, millions of pounds had been use- 
lessly squandered, all the interests of civilization and in- 
dustry had been injured or neglected, but it can scarcely 
be said that a single important result had been achieved ' 
(England in the Eighteenth Century, chapter 4, near be- 
ginning). 

249. Hussar. Light Hungarian Cavalry. Hussars were 
not used in other European armies till later. The word is 
an adaptation in Hungarian of It. corsaro, ' corsair.' 

255-310. In The Rambler, Xo. 69, Johnson gives a similar 
but more inclusive description of the evils of old age. 

261-272. In like manner luxurious food and sweet music 
fail to relieve the wretchedness of Rasselas (chap. 2); cf. 
120. 8 if. 

268. 1st Ed.: And yield the tuneful lenitives. 

291-98. Goldsmith had not forgotten this passage when 
he wrote Deserted Tillage 97-112; especially the lines: 

How happy he who crowns in shades like these 
A youth of labor with an age of ease, 
Who quits a world where strong temptations try, 
And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly ! 



But on he moves to meet his latter end, 
Angels around befriending Virtue's friend ; 
Bends to the grave with unperceived decay, 
W hile resignation gently slopes the way ; 
And, all his prospects brightening to the last, 
His heaven commences ere the world be past. 

297. Mrs. Thrale (Misc. 1. 151) says this line refers 
to an incident in the life of Johnson's mother, now nearly 
eighty years old. ' So excellent was her character, and so 
blameless her life, that when an oppressive neighbor, once 
endeavored to take from her a little field she possessed, 
he could persuade no attorney to undertake the cause 
against a woman so beloved in her narrow circle/ 

313. Lydia's monarch. Croesus, to whom, being asked 



420 NOTES 

who is the happiest man, Solon replied : ' You appear to 
me to be master of immense treasures, and King of many 
nations; but as relates to what you inquire of me, I can- 
not say, till I hear you have ended your life happily.' See 
Herodotus 1. 30-33. 

317. Marlborough. In 1716 he suffered two strokes of 
paralysis. ' By these and successive attacks, he has been 
represented as reduced to a state of absolute debility, both 
of body and mind; and the Duchess has been accused of 
leading her infirm and suffering husband into public view, 
and exposing to the gazing multitudes so pitiful a spec- 
tacle of human imbecility ' ( Coxe, Memoirs of the Duke of 
Marlborough, Bohn ed., 3. 398-9). Coxe mentions John- 
son's line, and denies the truth of these rumors. Marl- 
borough lingered till 1722. 

318. Swift. 'He grew more violent; and his mental 
powers declined till (1741) it was found necessary that 
legal guardians should be appointed of his person and for- 
tune. He now lost distinction. His madness was com- 
pounded of rage and fatuity, The last face he knew was 
that of Mrs. White way, and her he ceased to know in a 
little time. His meat was brought to him cut into mouth- 
f uls ; but he w z ould never touch it while the servant staid, 
and at last, after it had stood perhaps an hour, would eat 
it walking' {Lives 3. 48-9). He afterwards ' sunk into 
lethargic stupidity, motionless, heedless, and speechless ' 
(ibid. 49). 

321. Vane. Anne Vane, mistress of Frederick, Prince of 
Wales ; cf . 48 n. She died at Bath, where, in spite of de- 
sertion and ill health, she had hoped to live more happily 
than ever before (Hervey, Memoirs, vol. 2). 

Sedley. Catherine Sedley, Countess of Dorchester, mis- 
tress of James II., before he came to the throne. The 
King then with difficulty got rid of her. She afterwards, 
married, and, it was said, made a pious end. Perhaps 
Johnson had this in mind. 

345, 6. Cf . Dryden's rendering, 85, 6 : 

Some ask for envied power ; which public hate 
Pursues and hurries headlong to their fate. 



NOTES 421 

357,8. 1st Ed.: 

Yet icith the sense of sacred presence pressed, 
^Yhe)l strong devotion fills thy glowing oreast. 

364. 1st Ed.: Thinks death, etc. 

PROLOGUE AT DRURY LANE 

' This year (1747) his old pupil and friend, David Gar- 
rick, having become joint patentee and manager of Drury- 
lane theatre, Johnson honored his opening of it with a 
Prologue. ... It was, during the season, often called 
for by the audience' (Life 1. 181). 

46. Hunt and Mahomet were famous performers in these 
respects. Mahomet, a supposed Turk, had exhibited at the 
rival theatre, Covent Garden, the previous winter. 

52. The public voice. A favorite criterion of excellence 
with Johnson. See Introd., p. xxvii. 

LETTER TO CHESTERFIELD 

' "A man goes to a bookseller and gets what he can. 
We have done with patronage. In the infancy of learning 
we find some great man praised for it. This diffused it 
among others. When it becomes general, an author leaves 
the great and applies to the multitude." Boswell. " It is a 
shame that authors are not now better patronized." John- 
son. " No, Sir. If learning cannot support a man, if he 
must sit with his hands across till somebody feeds him, it 
is, as to him, a bad thing, and it is better as it is. With 
patronage what flattery! what falsehood! While a man is 
in equilibrio, he throws truth among the multitude, and 
lets them take it as they please; in patronage he must say 
what pleases his patron, and it is an equal chance whether 
that be truth or falsehood"' (Life 5. 59). At another 
time (Life 2. 10) Johnson remarked thus: 'Why, Sir, I 
was never near enough to great men to court them. You 
may be prudently attached to great men, and yet in- 
dependent. You are not to do what you think wrong; and, 
Sir, you are to calculate, and not pay too dear for what 
you get. You must not give a shilling's worth of court 



422 NOTES 

for six-pence worth of good. But if you can get a shilling's 
worth of good for six-pence worth of court, you are a fool 
if you do not pay court.' 

26. 3. Proprietor of The World. Edward Moore, one of 
Johnson's needy acquaintances during his earlier years in 
London. 

26. 14. ( Le vainqueur, 9 etc. ' Boileau, UArt Poetique 
3. 272' (Hill). 

26. 23. The affront occurred, then, in 1748, the year John- 
son wrote The Vanity of Human Wishes (cf. 1. 160, and 
note). Sept. 5, G.S., 1748, Chesterfield wrote to the Mar- 
quise de Monconseil that he had a boudoir so bright and 
pleasant that he always received in it such callers as were 
awkward and uncouth. ' When such an animal is announced 
I run to my boudoir as to a sanctuary.' In surroundings 
so cheerful he is sure to be amused rather than depressed 
by his clumsy visitant. 

27. 1. The shepherd of Virgil. Eel. 8. 43 ff. 

27. 9. / am solitary. One of several allusions to the 
death of his wife; cf. 58. 4, 19; 383, 392, 

27. 16. So little obligation. See 58. 1 and notes. 

The following passages from the Plan of an English Dic- 
tionary (1747), addressed to Chesterfield are interesting 
both in themselves, and in comparison with the Preface. 

To the Right Honorable Philip Dormer,, 

Earl of Chesterfield^ 

One of His Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State. 

My Lord : 

When first I undertook to write an English Dictionary, I 
had no expectation of any higher patronage than that of the 
proprietors of the copy, nor prospect of any other advantage 
than the price of my labor. I knew that the work in which I 
engaged is generally considered as drudgery for the hlind, 
as the proper toil of artless industry ; a task that requires 
neither the light of learning, nor the activity of genius, but 
may be successfully performed without any higher quality 
than that of bearing burdens with dull patience, and beating 
the track of the alphabet with sluggish resolution. 

Whether this opinion, so long transmitted, and so widely 
propagated, had its beginning from truth and nature, or from 
accident and prejudice ; whether it be decreed by the au- 
thority of reason, or the tyranny of ignorance, that of all 
the candidates for literary praise, the unhappy lexicographer 



NOTES 423 

holds the lowest place, neither vanity nor interest incited 
me to inquire. It appeared that the province allotted me 
was, of all the regions of learning, generally confessed to be 
the least delightful, that it was believed to produce neither 
fruits nor flowers ; and that, after a long and laborious 
cultivation, not even the barren laurel had been found upon it. 

Yet on this province, my Lord, I entered, with the pleasing 
hope, that, as it was low, it likewise would be safe. I was 
drawn forward with the prospect of employment, which, 
though not splendid, would be useful ; and which, though it 
could not make my life envied, would keep it innocent ; 
which would awaken no passion, engage me in no conten- 
tion, nor throw in my way any temptation to disturb the 
quiet of others by censure, or my own by flattery. 

I had read indeed of times in which princes and states- 
men thought it part of their honor to promote the improve- 
ment of their native tongues ; and in which dictionaries were 
written under the protection of greatness. To the patrons 
of such undertakings I willingly paid the homage of believ- 
ing that they who were thus solicitous for the perpetuity of 
their language had reason to expect that their actions would 
be celebrated by posterity, and that the eloquence which they 
promoted would be employed in their praise. But I con- 
sider such acts of beneficence as prodigies, recorded rather to 
raise wonder than expectation ; and, content with the terms 
that I had stipulated, had not suffered my imagination to 
flatter me with any other encouragement, when I found that 
my design had been thought by your Lordship of importance 
sufficient to attract your favor. 

How far this unexpected distinction can be rated among 
the happy incidents of life, I am not yet able to determine. 
Its first effect has been to make me anxious, lest it should 
fix the attention of the public too much upon me, and, as 
it once happened to an epic poet of France, by raising the 
reputation of the attempt, obstruct the reception of the work. 
I imagine what the world will expect from a scheme prose- 
cuted under your Lordship's influence ; and I know that ex- 
pectation, when her wings are once expanded, easily reaches 
heights which performance never will attain ; and when she 
has mounted the summit of perfection, derides her follower, 
who dies in the pursuit. 

Not therefore to raise expectation, but to repress it, I 
here lay before your Lordship the plan of my undertaking, 
that more may not be demanded than I intend ; and that, 
before it is too far advanced to be thrown into a new 
method, I may be advertised of its defects or superfluities. 
Such informations I may justly hope, from the emulation 
with which those who desire the praise of elegance or dis- 
cernment must contend in the promotion of a design that 
you, my Lord, have not thought unworthy to share your 
attention with treaties and with wars. 



424 NOTES 

In the first attempt to methodize my ideas I found a diffi- 
culty which extended itself to the whole work. It was not 
easy to determine by what rule of distinction the words of 
this Dictionary were to be chosen. The chief intent of it 
is to preserve the purity, and ascertain the meaning, of our 
English idiom ; and this seems to require nothing more than 
that our language be considered so far as it is our own ; 
that the words and phrases used in the general intercourse 
of life, or found in the works of those whom we commonly 
style polite writers, be selected, without including the terms 
of particular professions : since, with the arts to which they 
relate, they are generally derived from other nations, and are 
very often the same in all the languages of this part of 
the world. This is, perhaps, the exact and pure idea of a 
grammatical dictionary ; but in lexicography, as in other arts, 
naked science is too delicate for the purposes of life. The 
value of a work must be estimated by its use : it is not 
enough that a dictionary delights the critic, unless, at the 
same time, it instructs the learner ; as it is to little purpose 
that an engine amuses the philosopher by the subtilty of its 
mechanism, if it requires so much knowledge in its appli- 
cation as to be of no advantage to the common workman. 

The title which I prefix to my work has long conveyed a 
very miscellaneous idea, and they that take a dictionary into 
their hands, have been accustomed to expect from it a solu- 
tion of almost every difficulty. If foreign words therefore 
were rejected, it could be little regarded, except by critics, 
or those who aspire to criticism ; and however it might en- 
lighten those that write, would be all darkness to them that 
only read. The unlearned much oftener consult their dic- 
tionaries for the meaning of words, than for their structures 
or formations ; and the words that most want exploration, 
are generally terms of art ; which, therefore, experience has 
taught my predecessors to spread with a kind of pompous 
luxuriance over their productions. 

The academicians of France, indeed, rejected terms of science 
In their first essay, but found afterwards a necessity of 
relaxing the rigor of their determination ; and, though they 
would not naturalize them at once by a single act, per- 
mitted them by degrees to settle themselves among the natives, 
with little opposition ; and it would surely be no proof of 
judgment to imitate them in an error which they have now 
retracted, and deprive the book of its chief use, by scrupulous 
distinctions. 



When all the words are selected and arranged, the first 
part of the work to be considered is the orthography, which 
was long vague and uncertain ; which at last, when its fluc- 
tuation ceased, was in many cases settled but by accident ; 
and in which, according to your Lordship's observation, there 
Is still great uncertainty among the best critics : nor is it 



XOTES 425 

easy to stare a rule by which we may decide between custom 
and reason, or between the equiponderant authorities of 
writers alike eminent for judgment and accuracy. 

The great orthographical contest has Jong subsisted between 
etymology and pronunciation. It has been demanded, on one 
hand, that men should write as they speak ; but as it has 
been shown that this conformity never was attained in any 
language, and that it is not more easy to persuade men to 
agree exactly in speaking than in writing, it may be asked 
with equal propriety, why men do not rather speak as they 
write. In France, where this controversy was at its greatest 
height, neither party, however ardent, durst adhere steadily 
to their own rule ; the etymologist was often forced to spell 
with the people ; and the advocate for the authority of 
pronunciation found it sometimes deviating so capriciously 
from the received use of writing, that he was constrained to 
comply with the rule of his adversaries, lest he should lose 
the end by the means, and be left alone by following the 
crowd. 

When a question of orthography is dubious, that prac- 
tice has, in my opinion, a claim to preference which pre- 
serves the greatest number of radical letters, or seems most 
to comply with the general custom of our language. But the 
chief rule which I propose to follow is, to make no inno- 
vation, without a reason sufficient to balance the inconve- 
nience of change ; and such reasons I do not expect often 
to find. All change is of itself an evil, which ought not 
to be hazarded but for evident advantage ; and as incon- 
stancy is in every case a mark of weakness, it will add 
nothing to the reputation of our tongue. There are, indeed, 
some who despise the inconveniences of confusion, who seem 
to take pleasure in departing from custom, and to think 
alteration desirable for its own sake : and the reformation 
of our orthography, which these writers have attempted, should 
not pass without its due honors, but that I suppose they 
hold a singularity its own reward, or may dread the fascina- 
tion of lavish praise. 

Closely connected with orthography is pronunciation, the 
stability of which is of great importance to the duration of 
a language, because the first change will naturally begin 
by corruptions in the living speech. The want of certain 
rules for the pronunciation of former ages, has made us 
wholly ignorant of the metrical art of our ancient poets ; 
and since those who study their sentiments regret the loss 
of their numbers, it is surely time to provide that the har- 
mony of the moderns may be more permanent. 

A new pronunciation will make almost a new speech ; and 
therefore, since one great end of this undertaking is to fix 
the English language, care will be taken to determine the 
accentuation of all polysyllables by proper authorities, as it 



426 NOTES 

is one of those capricious phenomena which cannot be easily- 
reduced to rules. 

When this part of the work is performed, it will be 
necessary to inquire how our primitives are to be deduced 
from foreign languages, which may be often very success- 
fully performed by the assistance of our own etymologists. 
This search will give occasion to many curious disquisitions, 
and sometimes perhaps to conjectures, which to readers un- 
acquainted with this kind of study, cannot but appear im- 
probable and capricious. But it may be reasonably imagined 
that what is so much in the power of men as language, 
will very often be capriciously conducted. Nor are these 
disquisitions and conjectures to be considered altogether as 
wanton sports of wit, or vain shows of learning ; our lan- 
guage is well known not to be primitive or self -originated, 
but to have adopted words of every generation, and, either 
for the supply of its necessities, or the increase of its 
copiousness, to have received additions from very distant 
regions ; so that in search of the progenitors of our speech, 
we may wander from the tropic to the frozen zone, and find 
some in the valleys of Palestine, and some upon the rocks 
of Norway. 

By tracing in this manner every word to its original 
and not admitting, but with great caution, any of which no 
original can be found, we shall secure our language from 
being overrun wuth cant, from being crowded with low terms, 
the spawn of folly or affectation, which arise from no just 
principles of speech, and of which therefore no legitimate 
derivation can be shown. 

Thus, my Lord, will our language be laid down, distinct 
in its minutest subdivisions, and resolved into its elemental 
principles. And who upon this survey can forbear to wish, 
that these fundamental atoms of our speech might obtain 
the firmness and immutability of the primogenital and con- 
stituent particles of matter, that they might retain their sub- 
stance while they alter their appearance, and be varied and 
compounded, yet not destroyed? 

But this is a privilege which words are scarcely to ex- 
pect : for, like their author, when they are not gaining 
strength, they are generally losing it. Though art may some- 
times prolong their duration, it will rarely give them per- 
petuity ; and their changes will be almost always informing 
us, that language is the work of man, of a being from whom 
permanence and stability cannot be derived. 

The great labor is yet to come, the labor of interpreting 
these words and phrases with brevity, fullness, and per- 
spicuity; a task of which the extent and intricacy is suffi- 



NOTES 427 

ciently shown by the miscarriage of those who have generally 
attempted it. This difficulty is increased by the necessity of 
explaining the words in the same language ; for there is often 
only one word for one idea ; and though it be easy to translate 
the words 'bright , sweet, salt, bitter, into another language, it 
is not easy to explain them. 

I know well, my Lord, how trifling many of these remarks 
will appear separately considered, and how easily they may 
give occasion to the contemptuous merriment of sportive idle- 
ness, and the gloomy censures of arrogant stupidity ; but dull- 
ness it is easy to despise, and laughter it is easy to repay. 
I shall not be solicitous what is thought of my work by such 
as know not the difficulty or importance of philological studies ; 
nor shall think those that have done nothing qualified to con- 
demn me for doing little, It may not, however, be im- 
proper to remind them, that no terrestrial greatness is more 
than an aggregate of little things ; and to inculcate, after the 
Arabian proverb, that drops, added to drops, constitute the 
ocean. 

Of antiquated or obsolete words, none will be inserted but 
such as are to be found in authors who wrote since the 
accession of Elizabeth, from which we date the golden age of 
our language ; and of these many might be omitted, but that 
the reader may require, with an appearance of reason, that 
no difficulty should be left unresolved in books which he finds 
himself invited to read, as confessed and established models 
of style. These will be likewise pointed out by some note of 
exclusion, but not of disgrace. 

The words which are found only in particular books, will 
be known by the single name of him that has used them ; but 
such will be omitted, unless either their propriety, elegance, 
or force, or the reputation of their authors, affords some 
extraordinary reason for their reception. 

Words used in burlesques and familiar compositions, will be 
likewise mentioned with their proper authorities : such as 
dudgeon, from Butler, and leasing from Prior; and will be 
diligently characterized by marks of distinction. 

Barbarous or impure words and expressions, may be branded 
with some note of infamy, as they are carefully to be eradi- 
cated wherever they are found : and they occur too frequently 
even in the best writers : as in Pope, 

endless error hurl'd. 



I 



Tis these that early taint the female soul. 

in Addison, 

Attend to what a lesser muse indites. 

and in Dryden, 

A dreadful quiet felt, and icorser far 
Than arms 



428 NOTES 

If this part of the work can be well performed, it will be 
equivalent to the proposal made by Boileau to the academicians, 
that they should review all their polite writers, and correct 
such impurities as might be found in them, that their au- 
thority might not contribute, at any distant time, to the 
depravation of the language. 

With regard to questions of purity, or propriety, I was once 
in doubt whether I should not attribute too much to myself, 
in attempting to decide them, and whether my province was 
to extend beyond the proposition of the question, and the dis- 
play of the suffrages on each side ; but I have been since 
determined, by your Lordship's opinion, to interpose my own 
judgment, and shall therefore endeavor to support what ap- 
pears to me most consonant to grammar and reason. Ausonius 
thought that modesty forbad him to plead inability for a 
talk to which Caesar had judged him equal. 

Cur me posse negem posse quod ille putat? 

And I may hope, my Lord, that since you, whose authority 
in our language is so generally acknowledged, have com- 
missioned me to declare my own opinion, I shall be considered 
as exercising a kind of vicarious jurisdiction, and that the 
power which might have been denied to my own claim, will be 
readily allowed me as the delegate of your Lordship. 

In citing authorities, on which the credit of every part of 
this work must depend, it will be proper to observe some 
obvious rules ; such as of preferring writers of the first repu- 
tation to those of an inferior rank ; of noting the quotations 
with accuracy ; and of selecting, when it can be conveniently 
done, such sentences, as, besides their immediate use, may 
give pleasure or instruction, by conveying some elegance of 
language, or some precept of prudence, or piety. 

It has been asked on some occasions, who shall judge the 
judges? And since, with regard to this design, a question may 
arise by what authority the authorities are selected, it is 
necessary to obviate it, by declaring that many of the writers 
whose testimonies will be alleged, were selected by Mr. Pope ; 
of whom, I may be justified in affirming, that were he still 
alive, solicitous as he was for the success of this work, he 
would not be displeased that I have undertaken it. 

This, my Lord, is my idea of an English Dictionary ; a dic- 
tionary by which the pronunciation of our language may be 
fixed, and its attainment facilitated ; by which its purity may 
be preserved, its use ascertained, and its duration lengthened. 
And though, perhaps, to correct the language of nations by 
books of grammar, and amend their manners by discourses of 
morality, may be tasks equally difficult ; yet, as it is unavoid- 
able to wish, it is natural likewise to hope, that your Lord- 
ship's patronage may not be wholly lost ; that it may con- 
tribute to the preservation of ancient, and the improvement 



'NOTES 429 

of modern, writers ; that it may promote the reformation of 
those translators, who, for want of understanding the char- 
acteristical difference of tongues, have formed a chaotic dialect 
of heterogeneous phrases ; and awaken to the care of purer 
diction some men of genius, whose attention to argument makes 
them negligent of style, or whose rapid imagination, like the 
Peruvian torrents, when it brings down gold, mingles it with 
sand. 

When I survey the Plan which I have laid before you, I 
cannot, my Lord, but confess, that I am frighted at its ex- 
tent, and like the soldiers of Ccesar, look on Britain as a new 
world, which it is almost madness to invade. But I hope 
that though I should not complete the conquest, I shall at 
least discover the coast, civilize part of the inhabitants, and 
make it easy for some other adventurer to proceed farther, 
to reduce them wholly to subjection, and settle them under 
laws. 

We are taught by the great Roman orator, that every man 
should propose to himself the highest degree of excellence, but 
that he may stop with honor at the second or third : though 
therefore my performance should fall below the excellence of 
other dictionaries, I may obtain, at least, the praise of hav- 
ing endeavored well ; nor shall I think it any reproach to my 
diligence, that I have retired without a triumph, from a con- 
test with united academies, and long successions of learned 
compilers. I cannot hope, in the warmest moments, to preserve 
so much caution through so long a work as not often to sink 
into negligence, or to obtain so much knowledge of all its 
parts, as not frequently to fail by ignorance. I expect that 
sometimes the desire of accuracy will urge me to superfluities, 
and sometimes the fear of prolixity betray me to omissions : 
that in the extent of such variety I shall be often bewildered ; 
and in the mazes of such intricacy be frequently entangled ; 
that in one part refinement will be subtilized beyond exactness. 
and evidence dilated in another beyond perspicuity. Yet I 
do not despair of approbation from those who, knowing the 
uncertainty of conjecture, the scantiness of knowledge, the 
fallibility of memory, and the unsteadiness of attention, can 
compare the causes of error with the means of avoiding it, 
and the extent of art with the capacity of man ; and what- 
ever be the event of my endeavors, I shall not easily regret 
an attempt which has procured me the honor of appearing thus 
publicly, 

My Lord, 
Your Lordship's most obedient, 
and most humble servant. 

Sam. Johxsox. 

29. 8. Writer of dictionaries. In the Dictionary John- 
son defines lexicographer ' a writer of dictionaries, a harm- 
less drudge'; and Grubstreet 'originally the name of a 



430 NOTES 

street . . . much inhabited by writers of small histories, 
dictionaries, and temporary poems/ In Adventurer 39 he 
mentions 6 the low drudgery of collating copies, comparing 
authorities, digesting dictionaries, or accumulating com- 
pilations.' 

30. 31 ff. In the following criticism Johnson approaches 
a conception of etymology that is now fundamental in the 
science. The history of the language is primarily the his- 
tory of the spoken, not of the written language; 'it is a 
record of the facts that did happen, not a fabric, of con- 
jectures as to what may have happened' (J. A. H. Murray, 
Evolution of English Lexicography, p. 44). 

31. 19. The derivatives length, etc. The history of the 
spoken language shows that the forms here cited 
as anomalous, are not so, but the natural result of 
common processes like umlaut, analogy, or the regular in- 
fluence of certain consonants upon certain vowels. Instead 
of ' showing little regard ' for phonology, ' in the deduction 
of one language from another,' etymologists have found it 
of chief importance in their science. 

31. 22. Eighth. This form is etymological ly correct. 
It was still common in the South of England in Milton's 
time. 

'Quid te juvat [or levatj spinis de pluribus una?' 

— Horace, Ep. 2. 212. 

— Will you think, my friend, your business done, 
When of a hundred thorns you pull out one? 

— Pope, Imitation of Ep. 2, 1. 320, 1. 

32. 12. We had dominions in France, with a touch of 
Johnson's stout patriotism. If he refers to the late Thir- 
teenth and the Fourteenth Century he is right, for during 
that time, and not just after the Norman Conquest, came 
the largest borrowing from the French. The chief borrow- 
ings from the Latin liturgy came long before the Conquest. 

33. 24. Hooker. ( Alteration, though it be from worse 
to better, hath in it inconveniences' {Ecclesiastical Polity 
4. 14. 1). 

34. 4. Science. See London 38, n. 

35. 11. Languages. That is, 'groups of languages/ 



NOTES 431 

35. 26. Junius. Francis Junius, or Du Jon, 1589-1677, 
a studious pioneer in the field of Teutonic languages, es- 
pecially Old English. His Etymologicum Anglican urn, 
which Johnson used, was first printed in 1743 by Lye, 
afterwards a member of the Literary Club. 

Skinner (1623-1667). His etymological studies were pub- 
lished in 1671 as the Etymologicon Linguce Anglicance, 
which Johnson used. 

35. 35. Northern languages. 'Teutonic'; cf. 'northern 
Muses,' 36. 8; 'northern learning,' 48. 18. 

36. 19. I have here omitted a long note in which 
Johnson cites from Junius ' a few specimens of his ety- 
mological extravagance.' 

37. 1. To collect the words. In three important respects 
Johnson improved upon predecessors — in his great extension 
of the word-list, his use of illustrative quotations, skilfully 
and copiously gathered from his enormous reading, and his 
expert technique in framing definitions. Cf. also 42. 21 fL. 
and note. 

37. 10. Common or appellative, i. e., not including proper 
nouns. 

39. 32. Bailey. His Universal Etymological English 
Dictionary, 1721, was the common authority till Johnson's 
book appeared. It made some attempt at etymology, and, 
in a later edition, indicated pronunciation. It was John- 
son's chief help in compiling a word-list. 

Ainsworth. Johnson refers to his Latin-English Diction- 
ary, 1743. 

Philips. Edward Phillips, nephew and pupil of Milton. 
Johnson refers to his New World of Words, 1658. 

42. 1. This confession. f A lady once asked him how he 
came to define Pastern the Knee of a horse; instead of mak- 
ing an elaborate defense, as she expected, he at once 
answered, " Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance " ' (Life 
1. 293). 

42. 2. Tully. Laws 2. 23. 59. 

42. 4. Aristotle. Poetics 25. 9, commenting upon II. 
10. 84. The question is not yet finally answered, judging 
from the definition in Liddell and Scott. 

42. 21 ff. This attempt at historical order of meanings 



432 NOTES 

was one of the most significant that Johnson made in 
lexicography. He was, of course, much handicapped by 
the necessity of going back not further than Sidney, and 
by the undeveloped state of the history of literature. The 
Neiv English Dictionary is a realization of his dream. 

43. 22. Ardor, ' fierce or burning heat ; concr. fire, flame ' 
(N. E. D., with quotations from 1645 to 1814, including 
one from 1755). 

43. 23. Flagrant, 'blazing, burning' (N. E. D., with 
quotations from 1513 to 1856). 

44. 20. Fit, ' a paroxysm or exacerbation of any inter- 
mittent distemper' (Johnson's Diet.). But where he uses 
a hard word in defining, he nearly always adds a para- 
phrase admirable for its directness and simplicity, and 
many a definition in the N. E. D. is quoted from him or 
adapted with slight change. 

45. 15. Verdure and flowers, A favorite figure; cf. Lon- 
don 45, n. 

46. 4. Tenderness of friendship. ' Soon after the publi- 
cation of his Dictionary, Garrick being asked by Johnson 
what people said of it, told him that, among other 
animadversions, it was objected that he cited authori- 
ties which were beneath the dignity of such a work, and 
mentioned Richardson. "Kay," said Johnson, "I have 
done worse than that; I have cited thee, David " ' (Life 4. 4) . 
Hill (Life 4. 4, n. 3) mentions Mrs. Lennox and Beattie as 
other friends quoted. Clarissa is not infrequently cited, 
and in the fourth edition (1773) are numerous quotations 
from Reynolds. Johnson sometimes quotes from himself; 
see Vanity 97, n. 

46. 10. ' Wells of English undefiled.' ' Dan Chaucer, well 
of English undefiled' (Spenser, Faery Queen 4. 2. 32. 8). 

46. 25 ff. This preference of Elizabethan English is not 
mere antiquarianism in Johnson. He felt its strength, 
flexibility, and permanence as a medium of expression; and 
though his own style at its best is not superficially Eliza- 
bethan, it exemplifies certain virtues of the language at 
that time, especially its vigor and uniformity. 

48. 34. Alleged, ' cited, quoted,' a meaning not given in 
Johnson's Diet. 



NOTES 433 

48. 36. Memory. 'His memory was so tenacious that 
he never forgot anything that he either heard or read. Mr. 
Hector [Johnson's schoolmate] remembers having recited 
to him eighteen verses, which, after a little pause, he re- 
peated verbatim, varying only one epithet, by which he 
improved the line' {Life 1. 48). Many illustrations of his 
powers of memory occur in Boswell, and the frequent in- 
accuracies of reference or quotation are after all slight, 
and but show the extent to which he trusted these powers. 

49. 7 ft". Johnson's idealism never found nobler expression 
than in this paragraph. 

49. 18. Northern learning. For Johnson's interest in 
'northern antiquities/ see p. xl.; London 248, n. 

49. 31. These Dreams of a poet. The dreams also of 
Diderot as he conceived the famous Encyclopaedia; and they 
were in large part realized. ' It has been often told how 
Diderot himself used to visit the workshops, to watch the 
men at work, to put a thousand questions, to sit down 
at the loom, to have the machine pulled to pieces and set 
together again before his eyes, to slave like any apprentice, 
and to do bad work, in order, as he says, to be able to 
instruct others how to do good work. That was no move- 
ment of empty rhetoric which made him cry out for the 
Encyclopaedia to become a sanctuary in which human know- 
ledge might find shelter against time and revolutions. He 
actually took the pains to make it a complete storehouse 
of the arts, so perfect in detail that they could be at once 
reconstructed after a deluge in which everything had 
perished save a single copy of the Encyclopaedia ' (J. Morley, 
Diderot 1. 194). 

50. 25. School philosophy. The university course in 
liberal arts; cf. Johnson's definitions of school, philosophy, 
and science. 

51. 23. Academicians della Crusca. The Academia della 
Crusca ('of the bran') had as its principal object the sift- 
ing and purification of the Italian language. It was the 
most illustrious of the Italian literary academies that, in 
the Sixteenth Century, sprang from humanism. Its great 
work was the Yocabalario della Crusca, 1613. 

51. 25. Buonaroti (1568-1646). Michelangelo the 



434 NOTES 

Younger, nephew to the great painter, whose sonnets he 
edited. He took part in compiling the Academy's diction- 
ary. The comedies here mentioned represent five days at a 
fair, and exhibit men from many industries and walks in 
life, together with allegorical figures of Art, Commerce, etc. 
52. 28. Dome of a temple. For Johnson's interest in 
architecture see p. xlv. ; 76. 31 n. 

52. 35. Fix our language. See the above citations from 
his Plan, written eight years earlier, especially the close. 
In Rambler 208 (1752) he says: 'I have labored to refine 
our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from 
colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular com- 
binations. Something, perhaps, I have added to the elegance 
of its construction, and something to the harmony of its 
cadence. When common words were less pleasing to the 
ear, or less distinct in their signification, I have familiar- 
ized the terms of philosophy, by applying them to popular 
ideas, but have rarely admitted any word not authorized 
by former writers; for I believe that whoever knows the 
English tongue in its present extent, will be able to express 
his thoughts without further help from other nations.' 

53. 19. Enchain syllables. A reminiscence of Vanity of 
Human Wishes 232 : ' The waves he lashes, and enchains 
the wind ' ; see note. 

53. 24. Father Paul. One of Johnson's first literary 
proposals in London (1737) was a translation from Italian 
of Father Paul Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent. He 
was also to translate Courayer's notes in his French ver- 
sion of 1736. Amelot's version appeared in 1683. 

53. 27. Boccaccio died in 1375, Machiavelli in 1527, and 
Caro, poet and translator, about 1566. 

55. 15. Swift in his petty treatise. A proposal for Cor- 
recting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue, 
1712. 

56. 6. An English Academy had been the hope of Ros- 
common, Dryden, and Swift. Johnson's protest against it 
was sincere and characteristic. He says (Life of Roscom- 
mon, Lives 1. 233) : ' In this country an academy could be 
expected to do but little. . . . Unanimity is impossible, 
and debate would separate the assembly.' And again : ' The 



NOTES 435 

edicts of an English academy would probably be read by 
many, only that they might be sure to disobey them. That 
our language is in perpetual danger of corruption cannot 
be denied; but what prevention can be found? The present 
manners of the nation would deride authority, and there- 
fore nothing is left but that every writer should criticize 
himself.' 

56. 13. Babble a dialect of France. Cf. London 91-131, 
and notes. 

56. 33. The day that was passing over me. Cf. Dan. 
4. 16. 

58. 1. Patronage of the great. Referring to the Chester- 
field episode. When Vaugelas, editor of the French 
Academy's dictionary, thanked his patron Richelieu for his 
pension, the cardinal said : ' Well, Monsieur, you will not 
forget the word " pension " in your dictionary.' * No, Mon- 
seigneur,' was the reply, ' and still less the word " grati- 
tude." ' Cf. Johnson's definition of ( pension,' London 51, n. 

58. 13. Beni had attacked the Academia della Crusca's 
dictionary for basing itself upon Tuscan usage and 
standards. In later editions it was altered in this respect. 

58. 14. Fifty years. The French dictionary was begun 
in 1639 and published in 1694; cf. the anecdote, Life 1. 186. 

THE RAMBLER, THE ADVENTURER, AND THE 
IDLER 

61. Murphy says this paper was occasioned by the popu- 
larity of Roderick Random (1748) and Tom Jones (1749). 
Richardson's Pamela and Clarissa had appeared. Johnson 
much preferred Richardson. He was an author ' who has 
enlarged the knowledge of human nature, and taught the 
passions to move at the command of virtue' (Rambler 97). 
In comparing the two he said: 'There is as great a differ- 
ence between them as between a man who knew how a watch 
was made (Richardson), and a man who could tell the 
hour by looking on the dial-plate' {Life 2. 49). ' " Sir, 
there is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Rich- 
ardson's than in all Tom Jones. ... If you were to read 
Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much 
fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read 



436 NOTES 

him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giv- 
ing occasion to the sentiment"' (2. 174). 

61. 13. Heroic romance. Bishop Percy says: 'When a 
boy he was immoderately fond of reading romances of chiv- 
alry, and he retained his fondness for them through life; so 
that spending a part of a summer (1764) at my parsonage 
house in the country, he chose for his regular reading the old 
Spanish romance of Feliccmarte of Eircania, in folio, which 
he read quite through. Yet I have heard him attribute to 
these extravagant fictions that unsettled turn of mind which 
prevented his ever fixing in any profession' (Life 1. 49). 
He read also Don Bellianis and II Palmerino d 9 Inghelterra 
(Life 3. 2). Addison has a bantering paragraph on these 
-extravagant stories in Spectator 99. 

61. 18. Scaliger. Speaking of Pontanus (1426-1503), 
sometimes ranked as the best Latin poet of his time, 
Scaliger says (Poetics 5. 4, s. v. Pontanus) that his poem 
on Tombs is almost entirely made of words like roses, 
violets, lilies, beauty, spring, Pallas, Venus, Grace, tears, 
myrrh, muses, Aganippe, Pierian, etc., to the point of dis- 
gusting his reader. 

62. 14. General converse and acute observation. Quali- 
fications to literary performance upon which Johnson in- 
sisted again and again. See 256. 5 ff., and notes ; p. xxx. 

62. 16. Plus oneris. Horace (Ep. 2. 1. 170) is speaking 
of comedy, which is commonly supposed to be an easy 
literary form, because its matter is drawn from daily life: 
but for that reason it is really more difficult and therefore 
is less indulged by its critics. 

62. 24. Apelles. The most famous painter of ancient 
times. Pliny (Nat. Eist. 35. 79 ff. ) says, when he exhibited 
his pictures in public, he, ' concealed behind the picture, 
would listen to the criticisms that were passed upon 
it. . . . It was under these circumstances, they say, that 
he was censured by a shoemaker for having represented the 
shoes with one shoestring too small. The next day, the 
shoemaker, quite proud at seeing the former error corrected, 
thanks to his advice, began to criticize the leg; upon which 
Apelles, full of indignation, popped his head out, and re- 
minded him that a shoemaker should give no opinion be- 



NOTES 437 

ycmd the shoes ' ; whence the proverb, *' Let the shoemaker 
stick to his last.' 

66. 5. Confound the colors of right and wrong. John- 
son often rebuked this sophistry of his times. ' But if he 
does really think that there is no distinction between virtue 
and vice ; why, Sir, when he leaves our houses, let us count 
our spoons' {Life 1. 432). 

66. 22. Roman tyrant. Caligula, who in his violent ex- 
cesses often exclaimed, in the words of the lost tragedy, 
AtrettSj * Oderint, duni metuant! ' (Suetonius, Caligula 30; 
cf. Tiberius 59) . 

67. motto. Elphinston. See 383. 11, and note. He 
translated over thirty Latin mottoes for The Rambler. 

68. 3. Fall. This transitive use of the word with ( price,' 
' value,' etc., was almost confined to the eighteenth century. 

68. 29. Every budding flower. See London 45, n. 

69. 13. Something wrong. Johnson was often forced in- 
to society by his own unbearable melancholy. 

70. 29. Chemists. Johnson was a dabbler in chemistry, 
and used to try experiments in his own room, and at the 
Thrales', where, according to Mrs. Piozzi, he was once nearly 
burned up in the laboratory he had improvised (Misc. 
1. 307) ; cf. p. xxxix. 

71. 22. Milton . . . to a learned stranger. He wrote 
thus to Erneric Bigot in 1658. See J. Hall, Milton's 
Familiar Letters, -p. 85. 

74. 19. Writings are not confirmed by his life. 'Lady 
Macleod objected that the author does not practise what 
he teaches. Johnson. " I cannot help that, Madam. That 
does not make his book the worse. People are influenced 
more by what a man says, if his practice is suitable to it — 
because they are blockheads. The more intellectual people 
are, the readier will they attend to what a man tells them. 
If it is just, they will follow it, be his practice what it 
will. Xo man practises so well as he writes. I have all my 
life long been lying till noon; yet I tell all young men, and 
tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not 
rise early will ever do any good" ' {Life 5. 210). ' Sir, are 
you so grossly ignorant of human nature, as not to 
know that a man may be very sincere in good principles, 



438 NOTES 

without having good practices' (Hid. 359). See 265. 
12 ff. 

75. 4. ' Works and Things Impossible, or at least not yet 
discovered, are propounded according as they fall under the 
several titles. And along with them those discoveries of 
which man is already posses sed, which are nearest and most 
akin to such impossibles; that men's industry may be 
excited and their spirits encouraged ' ( Bacon, Norma pref- 
aced to the Eistoria Isaturalis et Experimentalis, which 
begins with the Eistoria Ventorum; Works, ed. Spedding, 
Ellis, and Heath 9. 377). Accordingly Bacon proposes 
{Works 9. 464) as a desideratum ' a method of foreknowing 
the risings, fallings and times of the winds; a thing useful 
in navigation and agriculture, but especially so in selecting 
the times for naval engagements.' In his l approximation ' 
he says: 'Now, that the cause of the winds is explained, 
the more diligent observations of posterity (if it shall care 
at all about these things) will discover more certain 
prognostics.' 

75. 14. Eale. ' From the first time that the impressions 
of religion settled deeply in his mind, he used great caution 
to conceal it; not only in obedience to the rules given by 
our Savior of fasting, praying, and giving alms in secret, 
but from a particular distrust he had of himself, for he 
said he was afraid he should at some time or other do some 
enormous thing, which, if he were looked on as a very 
religious man, might cast a reproach on the profession of 
it, and give great advantages to impious men, to blaspheme 
the name of God' (G. Burnet, Life and Death of Sir Mat- 
thew Eale, London, 1760, p. 74). Johnson cites this little 
masterpiece of biography again at 91. 27. 

76. 31. A distant prospect. Over a year before this 
date Johnson had spent some time at Hampstead. His 
simile here may well be a recollection of the view of Lon- 
don from the hill. The Vanity of Human Wishes was in 
large part written there. Architectural grandeur appealed 
strongly to Johnson; see p. xlv.; 52. 28; 132. 2; 137. 36; 
200. 9*; 250. 19-22. 

77. motto. - Mult is dicendi.' For a fine paraphrase 
see Vanity of Human Wishes 17, 18. Johnson, as usual. 



NOTES 439 

quotes from memory. Juvenal lias, i torrens dicendi copia 
multis.' 

82. 7. This essay was written near his forty- first birth- 
day. On his twenty-seventh birthday he prayed: ' Mayest 
thou, O God, enable me for Jesus Christ's sake to spend this 
in such a manner that 1 may receive comfort from it at the 
hour of death.' On New Year's day of his thirty-sixth year : 
' Let me remember, my God, that as days and years pass 
over me, I approach nearer to the grave where there is no 
repentance.' In 1778 he said: 'I value myself upon this, 
that there is nothing of the old man in my conversation. 
I am now sixty-eight, and I have no more of it than at 
twenty-eight.' 

85. 15. Dictates. Rambler 87 discusses The Reasons 
why Advice is generally ineffectual. 

87. 19. Imperial tragedy. The epithet is suggested by 
Milton's ' gorgeous Tragedy, In sceptred pall/ Pens. 97, 8. 
Johnson uses it again in the Preface to Shakespeare ; see 
supra, p. xliv. 

88. 12. ' Parva si non cotidie fiant ' (Pliny, Ep. 3. 1. 3). 

88. 17. / have often thought. The same idea is ex- 
pressed by Goldsmith in the opening of his Life of Xash. 

89. 24. Account of Thuanus. Perhaps Johnson refers to 
an account in the Bibliotheca Politico-heraldica Selecta, by 
Charles Arndius, Rostock and Leipzig, 1707, which I have 
not seen. 

89. 35. Sallust. ' Citus modo, modo tardus, incessus ' 
(Conspiracy of Catiline 15. 5). 

90. 2. Melancthon. He so hated dilatoriness in business 
that * semper momentum horse juberet nominari,' and had 
slight opinion of a man who made an engagement for 
some time about, say, two or three o'clock ( Camerarius, 
Vita Melanchthonis, Halle, 1777, p. 62, §17). This Life 
by Melancthon's friend contained many of ' the invisible 
circumstances ' so prized by Johnson. 

90. 27. Tickell, See his Life of Addison usually prefixed 
to Addison's Works; also in Collins' Critical Essays and 
Literary Fragments, in An English Garner, p. 220. 

90. 30. Life of Malherb. By Racan. ' II ne falloit qu'- 
une femme lascive pour pervertir le sang de Charlemagne 



440 NOTES 

et de Saint Louys., et que tel qui se pensoit estre issu d'un 
de ces grands heros, estoit peut estre venu d'un valey de 
chambre ou d'un violon ' (CEuvres de Racan, Bibliotheque 
Elzevirenne , 1. 270). The other opinion occurs ibid. 1. 265. , 
Beggars in asking alms, said, ' Noble gentilhomme.' 

91. 27. Hale. Cf. 75. 14, n. On entering into office 
Hale drew up a list of ' things necessary to be continually 
had in remembrance.' One was, ' in business capital, 
though my nature prompt me to pity, yet to consider that 
there is also a pity due to the country ' ( Burnet's Life and 
Death of Hale, p. 31). 

91. 31. This paper seems to have been especially 
treasured by Boswell. He quotes at length from it in 
describing his intention at the opening of his Life of John- 
son, and no doubt it served as a guide and stimulus to him 
throughout the years which he spent in gathering materials 
for his book. 

92. 8. Important by their frequency. An allusion to 
Pliny; see 88. 12. 

92. 12. Draught of life. Perhaps Johnson recalls 
Rochester's Letters from Artemisia, ' make the nauseous 
draught of life go down.' 

92. 20. Balm of being. Allusion to Paradise Lost 11. 
542-6: 

And for the air of youth, 
Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will reign 
A melancholy damp of cold and dry, 
To weigh thy spirits down, and last consume 
The balm of life. 

92. 22. Verdure and flowers ; see London 45, n. and p. xli. 

95. 19. Generally degraded. Here and throughout the 
essay there is implied a contempt for mere popularity and 
for the man who is merely popular. ' A man will please 
more upon the whole by negative qualities than by positive; 
by never offending, than by giving a great deal of delight ' 
(Life 3. 149). In his Life of Waller he speaks of that 
'dull good nature, such as excites rather tenderness than 
esteem, and such as, though always treated with kindness, 
is never honored or admired.' See 159. 29, where he says: 
' I question whether some abatement of character is not 
ncessary to general acceptance.' 



NOTES 441 

96. 15. Philomides, ' laughter-loving/ Homer's epithet 
of Aphrodite. 

On Johnson as a good-natured man see p. xlvi. 

96. 18. Character of authors. ' Bayle's Dictionary is a 
very useful work for those to consult who love the bio- 
graphical part of literature, which is what I love most' 
(Life 1. 425). 

96. 22. Baillet (1649-1706). Johnson refers to his best 
known work, Jugements des Savants. The first of its seven 
volumes devotes more than half its space to a list of the 
prejudices interfering with just literary criticism. It dis- 
cusses fourteen kinds of prejudice, with minute distinction 
of the many varieties of each kind. 

97. 7. Dry den. k How much in vain it is for you to 
strive against the stream of the people's inclination ' ( Essay 
of Dram. Poesy, Ker's Essays of Dryden 1. 90). 

97. 25. Seneca. In his Ludus de Morte Claudii, 812. 
More exactly, 

Una tantum parte audita, 
Saepe ne utra. 

Claudius is satirized as having been able to see the right 
in a law-suit ' at hearing only one side of the quarrel- — often 
not either.' 

97. 30. Langbaine, 1656-92, compiled A New Catalogue 
of English Plays, and An Account of the English Dramatic 
Poets. He was an omnivorous reader of plays, and once 
owned a collection of over one thousand. Johnson calls him 
' the great detector of plagiarism ' [Life of Oticay) . 

Borrichius. Olaf Borch, 1626-90, librarian, and Professor 
of Philology, Chemistry, and Botany, at Copenhagen. His 
De Poetis is a critical and bibliographical review of Greek 
and Latin poets, but its most original part is a descriptive 
list of the mediaeval and modern Latin poets of all European 
nations. 

97. 31. Rapin, 1621-87, Jesuit critic and theologian. His 
Reflexions sur la Poetique includes a second part, Sur la 
Poetique en particulier, which implies the author's ac- 
quaintance with a vast number of writers — Latin, Greek, 
French, Italian, Spanish^ and English. 



442 NOTES 

98. 8. Dryden. Johnson's statement is illustrated by 
the titles of many of the Dissertations; see W. P. Ker's 
Essays of Dry den. Johnson says of Dryden' s criticism, ' his 
occasional and particular positions were sometimes in- 
terested, sometimes negligent, and sometimes capricious ' 
{Life of Dry den, Lives 1. 413). 

98. 11. Addison is suspected. See p. 332. In Spectator 
40 (April 16, 1711) he mentions the ridiculous doctrines in 
modern criticism ' that playwrights are ' obliged to an 
equal distribution of rewards and punishments, and an im- 
partial execution of poetical justice.' Four acts of Gato had 
been written; see p. 322. 

98. 33. Scaliger, Julius Caesar (1484-1538), born at 
Padua; his famous treatise on poetry claimed the su- 
periority of Vergil over Homer. This gave rise to a contro- 
versy which lasted a century, and in which Scaliger had 
many followers. Dryden preferred Vergil (Ker, Essays of 
Dry den 2. 128). Johnson and Burke once had a dispute on 
this question in which Johnson maintained the superiority 
of Homer (Life 5. 79, n. 2). 

100. 23. Addison. ' A true critic ought to dwell rather 
upon excellencies than imperfections, to discover the con- 
cealed beauties of a writer, and to communicate to the world 
such things as are worth their observation' (Spectator, 
No. 291). Later in the essay Addison says: 'As I intend 
in my next paper (really 297) to show the defects in 
Milton's Paradise Lost, I thought fit to premise these few 
particulars.' 

101. This Essay should be compared with Addison's 
Vision of llirza, Spectator No. 159. 

101. 1. Seneca. \ Tota vita nihil aliud quam ad 
mortem iter est' (Dial 11. 11. 2; cf. 6. 21, end). I find 
no passage exactly corresponding to Johnson's quotation. 

101. 18. Ocean of life. ' On life's vast ocean diversely 
we sail 5 (Pope, Essay on Man, 2. 107). Johnson uses the 
same figure at 218. 8, and in Rasselas, chap. 12; cf. Idler, 
No. 2, first paragraph. 

105. 35. Gaze not idly; touching upon what Johnson 
considered his own peculiar failing; cf. 122. Iff.; 393, 

106. 4. An ancient poet. Lucretius. Johnson makes a 



NOTES 443 

free paraphrase, doubtless from memory, of De Rerum 
Nat ura 5. 200-209. Munro translates: 'In the first place, 
of all the space which the vast reach of heaven covers, a 
portion greedy mountains and forests of wild beasts have 
occupied, rocks and wasteful pools take up, and the sea, 
which holds wide apart the coasts of different lands. 
IS T ext of nearly two- thirds burning heat and the constant 
fall of frost rob mortals. What is left for tillage, even 
that nature by its power would overrun with thorns, un- 
less the force of man made head against it, accustomed for 
the sake of a livelihood to groan beneath the strong hoe 
and to cut through the earth by pressing down the 
plough.' 

108. 1. Proverbial oracles. Such as 'A little leak will 
sink a great ship'; 'Ready money will away'; 'Better 
spare at the brim than at the bottom.' 

108. 14. Devote days and nights. See 363. 28, n. 

109. 28. Erasmus, born at Rotterdam about 1466, lived 
in the following places: 1497, Oxford; 1499, Paris, 
then Orleans and St. Omer's; 1506, London, Cambridge, 
Turin, Bologna; 1508, Padua; 1509, Siena, London, Cam- 
bridge; 1513, Strasburg; 1514, Basel; 1517, Flanders, 
Basel, England; 1520, Basel; 1529, Freiburg; 1535, Basel. 
He was neither poor nor neglected, but was driven about 
by his nervous and restless temperament. Carlyle exag- 
gerates the misery of Johnson much as Johnson does that 
of Erasmus and Statius (142. 15, n.). 

110. 3. Knowledge of the icorld . . . application to 
books. A necessary qualification of genius and scholar- 
ship; see p. xxxvi. 

110. 5. Literary heroes. The term recurs at 128. 18; 
215. 27. 

110. 7. Praise of Folly. The lightest, but best known 
of his works. It was written at Sir Thomas More's house 
in England from notes which he made on the journey from 
(not to) Italy. 

1 10. -20 ff. This jeu d'esprit, with its generalizations, 
its learned citations from writers ancient and modern, and 
its formal style, is a sly caricature of Johnson himself. 
He humorously indulges in the pedantry which he defines 



444 NOTES 

as ' the awkward ostentation of needless learning.' The 
essay is perhaps his best known. 

112. 3. Symbol of Pythagoras. This 'most pleasing 
apothegm' is cited by Steele (Tatler 214), but not in the 
Greek. I do not find it under Pythagoras or the Pythago- 
reans in any of the compilations of fragments of the 
philosophers. 

112. 12. 'Quam juvat; etc., Tib. 1. 1. 45-7. 

112. 22. ' Sed nil dulcius,' etc., De Rerum Nat. 2. 7-10. 

112. 37. ' Causa latet,' etc., Vergil, Mn. 5. 5. 

115. 3. Heart lightened in a rapid vehicle. 'In the 
afternoon, as we were driven rapidly along in the post- 
ehaise, he said to me, " Life has not many things better 
than this"' (Life 2. 453). 'If I had not duties, and no 
reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving 
briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman; but she 
would be one who could understand me, and would add 
something to the conversation' (ibid. 3. 162). 

115. 30. Aretceus. In his Causes and Symptoms of 
Chronic Diseases 1. 6. According to the common tale, the 
carpenter was perfectly rational in his work and conver- 
sation at home, but, once abroad, he gave way to groans, 
contortions, and madness, which lasted till he returned. 

116. 1. Solomon's house. A society described in The 
New Atlantis, founded by King ' Salamona,' and dedicated 
to the study of science. ' We have large and deep caves of 
several depths; the deepest are sunk six hundred fathom; 
and some of them are digged and made under great hills 
and mountains; so that if you reckon together the depths 
of the hill and the depth of the cave they are (some of 
them) above three miles deep. . . . We use them for all 
coagulations, indurations, refrigerations, and conservations 
of bodies; and the producing also of new artificial metals.' 
'We have high towers; the highest about half a mile in 
height; and some of them likewise sit upon high moun- 
tains; so that the vantage of the hill with the tower is in 
the highest of more than three miles at least. ... . We 
use these towers . . . for isolation, refrigeration, con- 
servation; and for the view of divers meteors; as winds, 
rain, snow, hail; and some of the fiery meteors also.' 



NOTES 445 

116. 22'ff. See 172. 8, n. 

122. 9. Summons from the press. 'He told us, almost 
all his Ramblers were written just as they were wanted 
for the press; that he sent a certain portion of the copy 
of an essay, and wrote the remainder, while the former 
part of it was printing. When it was wanted, and he had 
fairly sat down to it, he was sure it would be done ' 
(Life 3. 42). 

125. 31. Palladio, 1518-1580, the architect who, through 
his book on Architecture (1570), exerted the greatest in- 
fluence upon later Renaissance architecture in Europe. 
Inigo Jones, who translated his book, is the best known 
Palladian in England. A familiar example of his work 
still standing is the banqueting room of 'Whitehall palace 
(1622). 

127. 9. Enter the shops. As he had hoped, and per- 
haps was attempting to do in compiling his Dictionary. 
See p. 49 and notes. 

127. 32. Locke. - In his Conduct of the Understanding 
(about 1697) he says: 'The understanding should be 
brought to the difficult and knotty parts of knowledge 
that try the strength of thought and a full bent of the 
mind by insensible degrees, and in such a gradual pro- 
ceeding nothing is too hard for it' (§28). 

128. 18. Proper ambition. Intellectual curiosity was 
much admired by Johnson : see p. xxxix. For ' heroes of 
literature' see 110. 5; 215. 27. He is himself one in 
Carlyle's Hero as the Man of Letters. The figure of this 
sentence is expanded in Tennyson's Ulysses. 

130. 15. Fond endearments. Especially necessary to 
Johnson; see p. xxi. 

130. 27. The simile of Longinus. -Not in his treatise 
On the Sublime; but cf. chap. 17, which Johnson may have 
recalled vaguely, or associated with the simile as read in 
another author. 

132. 2. Pyramid. See Johnson's theory of society. 
Introd., p. xlix. The architectural figure is a favorite; 
cf. 76. 31, and notes. 

133. 11. Authors of London. Swift, in the Preface to 
the Tale of a Tub, proposes an academy large enough for 



446 NOTES 

9,743 persons, ' which, by modest computation, is reckoned 
to be pretty near the current number of wits in this 
island.' Either Johnson's recollection is inexact, or he has 
some other passage in mind. By ' wits ' Swift apparently 
meant authors. 

133. 36. Hackneyed in the ivays of men. ' So common- 
hackneyed in the eyes of men' (Shakespeare, Henry IV., 
Pt. 1, 3. 2. 40). Johnson misquotes ivays in the Die 
tionary (s. v. hackney), but of, course has eyes in his 
edition of Shakespeare. 

135. 12. The direction of Aristotle. At the opening of 
the Politics, Bk. 2, where he puts this advice into effect. 

137. 11. Locke. In The Conduct of the Understanding, 
§38, he says : ' This man presumes upon his parts, that 
they will not fail him at time of need; and so thinks it 
superfluous labor to make any provision beforehand. . . . 
Such men may spread their native riches before the ig- 
norant; but they were best not to come to stress and trial 
with the skillful.' 

137. 26. ' Nescire autem quid antequam natus sis ac- 
ciderit, id est semper esse puerum ' (Cic, Orator 120). 

139. 24 ff. Fame. Notice the veiled figure throughout 
this paragraph, and cf. London 45, n. 

140. 11. Apelles. A mistake for Zeuxis; Apelles was 
famous for his rapidity; the story is told by Plutarch, Be 
Multitudine Amicorum 94. 

141. 21. Patuecos of Spain. Hill cites Howell's In- 
structions for Foreign Travel, §10, where the Duke of Alva 
when hunting came, ' in the midle of Spaine,' upon the 
Pattuecos, ' a people that were never known upon the face 
of the Earth before.' They were ' a company of naked 
savage people, locked in between an assembly of huge crags 
and hils indented and hemmed in (as it were) one in 
another.' But Johnson may have also in mind a passage 
in Locke's Conduct of the Understanding about k The in- 
habitants of the Marian Islands, who, being separated by 
a large tract of sea from all communion with the habitable 
parts of the earth, thought themselves the only people in 
the world' (Works, Bohn Ed., 1.30). He cited this essay 
the preceding month (137. 11) ; also at 127. 32. 



NOTES 447 

142. 15. Statins. Johnson refers to the preface to the 
Silvw, where Statius makes a complacent apology for the 
necessary speed of composition imposed upon him by orders 
from great men. He mentions ' hos libellos, qui mihi subito 
calore et quadam festinandi voluptate fluxerunt.' Statius 
seems not to have been indigent (cf. Silv. 3. 1. 61), though 
it is characteristic of Johnson to imagine him so; cf. 129. 
28, n. The twelve years spent in composition of the 
Thebaid are mentioned at the close of the twelfth, and last 
book. The quotation is from Silv. 4t. 7. 26-8. 

142. 26. Ovid. See the Tristia 1. 7. 11-end. 

143. 10. Mne years. Ars Poetica 388. 
143. 15. 'Malta dies,' etc. Ibid. 293. 

143. 18. Blotted manuscripts of Milton. Given in 
facsimile in Facsimiles of the Milton Manuscripts at Trin- 
ity College, ed. by W. A. Wright, and in Sotheby's Earn- 
blings in Elucidation of the Autograph of Milton. Of 
these most interesting illustrations of great poems in the 
making, see especially Lines at a Solemn Music and 
Lycidas. 

143. 20. Pope's compositions. 'He examined lines and 
words with minute and punctilious observation, and re- 
touched every part with indefatigable diligence, till he had 
nothing left to be forgiven. For this reason he kept his 
pieces very long in his hands while he considered and re- 
considered them' (Johnson's Life of Pope, Lives 3. 221). 
4 He is said to have sent nothing to the press till it had 
lain two years under his inspection' (ibid. 220). 

144. 23 ff. ' JBaretti used sometimes to walk with John- 
son through the streets at night, and occasionally entered 
into conversation with unfortunate women who frequent 
them, for the sake of hearing their stories. It was from a 
history of one of those which a girl told under a tree in 
the King's Bench Walk in the Temple to Baretti and 
Johnson that he formed the story of Misella ' (Prior's 
M alone). A paper on the same subject, less elevated and 
sustained, occurs in Spectator 190; cf. Hogarth's series, 
The Harlot's Progress. 

155. 7. Brand of their calling. 'Perfect good breeding 
consists in having no particular mark of any profession; 



448 NOTES 

.... in a military man you can commonly distinguish 
the brand of a soldier ' ( Life 2. 82 ) . 

158. 5. Fabricius. Hill suggested that David Fabricius, 
the astronomer is meant, but he was a Protestant. Mechanist, 
not in the Diet., means usually ' inventor ' in Johnson. 

159. 29. Abatement of character. See Rambler, No. 72, 
and 95. 19, n. 

160. 16. Sardinian — or Sardonic — laughter. The expres- 
sion is found in French, Italian, and Spanish, but is 
originally Greek {Odyssey 20. 302). 'The common expl. 
given of this laugh was that it resembled the effect pro- 
duced by a Sardinian plant, . . . which when eaten 

, screwed up the face of the eater' (Liddell and Scott, 
Greek Lex.). 

161. 7. This method of ingratiating themselves. ' Do 
not tell stories in company; if by chance you know a very 
short story, and exceedingly applicable to the present sub- 
ject of conversation, tell it in as few words as possible ' 
(Chesterfield, Letters to his Son Oct. 16, O. S., 1747). 

161. 32. Good-natured man. See 96. 15 n. 

161. 37. Frofaneness and obscenity. Johnson would 
never ' sit unmoved and unaffected ' amidst them. * Obscen- 
ity and Impiety have always been repressed in my com- 
pany ' ( Life 4. 295 ) . 

162. 20. Fifteen years. It was very nearly fifteen 
years since Johnson began life in London. Such caricatures 
of clubs are common in earlier periodicals, but none are 
more delightful than Goldsmith's. 

162. 36. Necessary to be loved. See 130. 15, and note. 

172. 8 ff. The 'Oriental tale' is a not infrequent form 
of periodical essay in the Eighteenth Century, though it 
sometimes assumed more elaborate proportions. Miss 
Martha V. Conant begins her interesting book The Oriental 
Tale in England in the Eighteenth Century by saying that 
in such a study ' the high lights tall upon the Arabian 
Nights, Dr. Johnson's Rasselas, Goldsmith's Citizen of the 
World, and Beckford's Vathefc/ Addison, however, is the 
earliest master of Oriental narrative in the periodicals, and 
chiefly from him Johnson learned to use it. Besides this 
story of Seged and the story of Omar (p. 210), Johnson 



NOTES 449 

wrote six other Oriental tales for The Rambler or The 
Idler, namely, Rambler 38, 65 (strongly resembling Spec- 
tator 584, 5), 120 (p. 116), 190; Idler 75, 99 (after the 
Vision of Mirza, Spectator 159 ) . Like Addison's stories, 
Johnson's are moralistic or philosophical in tendency, but 
are somewhat heavier and more serious. They, of course, 
culminate in Rasselas. ' Seged ... is obviously an 
earlier draft of Rasselas/ Conant, op. cit., p. 123. 

183. 6. Filling for Sheriff. Paying a high fine to escape 
the duties of the office. • Some have fined for sheriff, and 
none are worth less than forty thousand pounds' {Rambler 
116). 

185. 8. ' Hoiv I hate his beams.' Milton, Par. Lost 4. 37. 

189. This essay is in part from La Bruyere; see R. 
Kleuker, Johnsons Verhdltniss zur franz. Literatur, p. 71. 

192. 3 ff. A week before this paper was written John- 
son's mother died in Lichfield; see pp. 368-70. 

193. 7. Tully. ' Nemo enim est tarn senex qui se annum 
non putet posse vivere ' (Cato the Elder on Old Age 24). 

194. 12. ' There is joy in the presence of the angels of 
God over one sinner that repenteth ' (Luke 15. 10; cf. 8). 

194. 20. See 11. Tim. 4. 7, 8; I. Cor. 3. 8. 

194. 29. 'Life and immortality' 11. Tim. 1. 10. 

194. 30. Epicurus, in the Fourth Century, founded the 
philosophy which bears his name. He taught that perfect 
independence, self-reliance, and contentment were the only 
means of happiness. 

194. 33. Zeno. Founder of the Stoic philosophy in the 
Fourth Century B.C. Rambler 32 discusses ' the Vanity 
of Stoicism.' 

196. 23. Death of Hercules. The details are all from 
the vivid account of Ovid, Met. 9. 166-238. 

197. 4. A passage in the Iliad. Bk. 21, 11. 34-135. 
The Trojan prince was Lycaon, son of Priam. 

197. 18. Ulysses. Referring to Homer, Odyssey 19. 361- 
502. When Odysseus returned, travel-stained and unknown, 
after his long wanderings, his old nurse was about to wash 
his feet when she recognized him by a scar on the thigh, 
and would have prematurely betrayed his identity, had he 
not suddenly stopped her. 



450 NOTES 

197. 24. Death of Epaminondas. At Mantineia. John- 
son amplifies the story as told by Cornelius Nepos (Epami- 
nondas 9 ) . The wounded Theban would not suffer the 
spear to be drawn from his side till the messenger came 
from the battle with news of victory. 

197. 35. Dissolution of Parliament. The Long Parlia- 
ment, arbitrarily dissolved in 1653. Johnson evidently was 
struck with the vivid picture in Edmund Ludlow's Memoirs, 
where Cromwell ' suddenly standing up, made a speech 
wherein he loaded the Parliament with the vilest reproaches, 
charging them not to have (i.e. with not having) a heart 
to do anything for the public good.' And again, ' looking 
upon one of the members, he said, " There sits a drunk- 
ard"; and giving much reviling language to others, he 
commanded the mace to be taken away, saying, " What 
shall we do with this bauble? Here take it away/' Having 
brought all into this disorder, Major General Harrison 
went to the Speaker as he sat in the chair, and told him, 
that seeing things were reduced to this pass, it would not 
be convenient ior him to remain there. The Speaker 
answered that he would not come down unless he were 
forced. " Sir," said Harrison, " I will lend you my hand "; 
and thereupon putting his hand within his, the Speaker 
came down' (ed. Firth, 1. 352-4,. The mention of Pande- 
monium, the Council-hall of the devils in Paradise Lost, 
insinuates that the Puritan Parliament was essentially a 
Council of Fiends, with Cromwell for its Satan. Benjamin 
West, the American painter, afterwards painted this sub- 
ject. He knew Reynolds and Johnson, and may have got 
his suggestion from this passage. 

198. 12. On Johnson's appreciation of irt see p. xliv. 
200-208. In these essays Johnson shows- his opinion of 

cant in literary criticism. Minim speaks tfnly the plati- 
tudes which had been accumulating since the days of Dry- 
den's literary dictatorship. 

201. 36. 'Nine years. See 143. 10, n. .: 

203. 6. Phcedra and Bippolytus, a tragedy by Edmund 
Smith, which ' pleased the critics, and the critics only.' ' It 
is a scholar's play, such as may please the reader rather 
than the spectator; the work of a vigorous and elegant 



NOTES 451 

mind, accustomed to please itself with its own conceptions, 
but of little acquaintance with the course of life' (John- 
son's Life of Smith, Lives 2. 16). Addison deplored the 
public's neglect of the play in Spectator 18. 

203. 37. Barbarossa, by Dr. Brown, acted by Garrick. 
Johnson criticised it because ' the use of the bell is un- 
known to the Mahometans' {Life 2. 131, n. 2). Cleone, 
by Robert Dodsley, was acted by Garrick in 1758, who said 
of two friends who came to see it, ' they were starved for 
want of company to keep them warm.' Nevertheless ' it 
was well received.' See Life 1. 325 and note. Johnson 
said of it, ' I am afraid there is more blood than 
brains.' 

204. 9. 'Sound an echo to the sense. 9 Pope, Essay on 
Criticism 365. 

In his Life of Pope Johnson protests against exaggeration 
of this quality. 

204. 15. 'And pulpit, 9 etc., Butler's Eudibras 1. 1. 11, 12. 

204. 19. ' Honor is like, 9 etc. Slightly misquoted from 
Eudibras 2. 2. 385-8. Either Johnson or Minim is mistaken 
in inferring, as it appears, that Butler refers to a soap 
bubble. He means the drop or bulb of glass which, if 
nipped at he stem, will burst to powder. The phenomenon 
puzzled the Royal Society. 

205. 16. An academy. For Johnson's opinion of such 
attempts, see 56. 6 and note. 

205. 34. ' The great vulgar. 9 Cowley, Imitations of 
Eorace, Od. 3. 1 (Hill). 

206. 32. ' The ground 9 etc. Misquoting Par. Lost 2. 
595 : * The parching air Burns frore,' etc. 

206. 35. 'So thick a drop, 9 etc. Ibid. 3.25. 

208. 7. Royal Society. The oldest scientific society in 
Great Britain and one of the oldest in Europe. It was 
formally founded in 1660. Sir Isaac Newton was for many 
years its President. Dryden's expectations of its triumphs, 
especially in navigation, are expressed in the Annus 
Mirabilis, st. 161-6. It was the custom to make fun of it 
from the beginning as late as Gray's time; cf. Johnson, 
Lives 2. 38, 9. Johnson doubtless has in mind Butler's 
fragment, A Satire upon the Royal Society. Disparagers 



452 - NOTES 

were answered in Sprat's famous History of the Royal 
Society, 1667. 

210. 17. Augustus. At his death, as narrated by 
Suetonius, Octavius 99. 

210. 19. See 172. 8,n. 

LIFE OF SAVAGE 

Boswell in the Life (1. 169-174) is the first publicly to 
doubt the story of Savage's birth. No other serious dis- 
cussion of the matter appeared until 1858 when, in Notes 
and Queries (2nd Series, 3.361, 385, 425, 445), W. Moy 
Thomas reviewed the whole question in the light of all 
procurable evidence, and concluded that Savage was an im- 
postor. In addition to Boswell's evidence, Mr. Thomas 
finds that, of Lady Macclesfield's two children, the second, 
a boy named Richard, was born Jan. 18, 1696 1 7 (not Jan. 
10, 1697 1 8, as Savage asserts), and there is some reason to 
think he died in JNovember, 1698. At any rate no trace of 
him is found after that. Both children were hidden from 
the Earl of Macclesfield, but their mother was nevertheless 
tenderly devoted to them and to their welfare. The boy 
never bore the name of Savage. The poet made no claim 
of identity with this boy until he was at least twenty. He 
said he learned that he was Lady Macclesfield's son from 
letters of his grandmother to his nurse, but these papers 
were never seen ; in later life he confessed that the nurse 
was a myth, and gave indefinite and conflicting accounts 
of his sources of information. Mr. Thomas' argument is 
long and ingenious, but contains so large an element of 
mere conjecture and opinion that it is not fully conclusive. 
The real facts probably never will be revealed. Savage 
seems to have been convinced, on insufficient evidence, that 
he was Lady Macclesfield's son, and was impudent and ir- 
responsible enough to create the evidence necessary to his 
purpose. Lady Macclesfield seemed to have been equally 
sure that Savage was not her son, but, in the want of 
sufficient evidence, followed the wisest policy of silence. 
Johnson drew his account of Savage's birth from printed 
accounts for which Savage himself had furnished the ma- 






NOTES 453 

terial; evidently he never discussed the subject with his 
friend (Life 1. 156). 

Johnson's authorities for Savage's birth and early life, in 
addition to the poet's own statements made to him during 
their intimacy, were: (1) the account in Jacob's Poetical 
Register, 1719; (2) information contained in The Plain 
Dealer, 1724, JS'os. 28 and 73: (3) The Life of Mr. Richard 
Savage, 1727; (4) Savage's Preface to the second edition 
of his Miscellanies, 1728. 

215. 1. Cf. the well-known opening of Rasselas: 'Ye 
who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pur- 
sue with eagerness the phantoms of hope, who expect that 
age will perform the promises of youth, and that the 
deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the 
morrow, attend to the history of Rasselas, prince of Abys- 
sinia.' 

215. 25. Follow it themselves. See 254. 34; Rambler, 
No. 14, p. 71 and notes. But in 265. 9 he says the mis- 
take of Savage's life was ' that he mistook the love for 
the practice of virtue.' 

21,5. 27. Heroes. See 128. 18, n. 

216. 1. Volumes. See 96. 18, and note. 

217. 14. Xot indeed easy to discover. The rest of this 
paragraph shows that Savage's story was not altogether 
explicable to Johnson. The wonder is that with his usual 
incredulity and his knowledge of Savage's character he 
should have accepted it without further inquiry. But the 
report was common, and belief in it was so general that 
scepticism was not encouraged. 

218. 8. Ocean of Life. See Rambler 102, p. 101, and 
notes. 

219. 12. Happier students. Milton's Vacation Exercise 
and his famous Nativity Ode were written while he was an 
undergraduate at Cambridge. 

220. 11. American plantations. Virginia or the West 
Indies. 

2-21. 10. Letters. In later life Savage denied that he 
found his information thus. 

222. 6. Bangorian Controversy. A confused and angry 
dispute essentially on the question of the divine right of 



454 NOTES 

Kings and the authority of the clergy, which centred about 
Hoadley, Bishop of Bangor, of the Low Church opinion. 
It ended (1717) in government interference, and the end of 
the Convocation as a deliberative body. 

223. 36. Without money. In this year, 1719, there 
were four actions for debt against Steele (Aitken, Life of 
Steele 2. 203). 

224. 21. Bailiffs. Hill cites a similar incident in The 
Examiner, No. 11. In Act 3 of Goldsmith's Good-Matured 
Man the hero tries to pass off bailiffs as friends of his. 
Goldsmith after his habit of adaptation may have got his 
suggestion from this source or The Examiner. 

225. 1. Daughter. Miss Ously, afterwards married to a 
Mr. Aynston. 

225. 17. Such iveaJcness is very common. Johnson may 
have had himself in mind. See p. xlvii, 382. 11, n., and 
Life 2. 256; 3. 273-8, for quarrels and reconciliation with 
Goldsmith and Percy. 

225. 31. Wilks. One of the first actors of his time. 
The Tatler (No. 182) and The Spectator (No. 370) praise 
him, and mention as his best parts, Macduff, Sir 
Harry Wildair (in Farquhar's play), and Prince Hal 
in Henry IV. Johnson's character of him is not over- 
drawn. 

226. 5. That condition. Of an actor. Boswell finds in 
this passage a very strong symptom of Johnson's preju- 
dice against players, which Boswell attributed to his deaf- 
ness, the failure of his own tragedy, and his jealousy of the 
success of his own pupil Garrick (Life 1. 167). But see 
p. xliv. Johnson said: 'He who can represent exalted 
characters, and touch the noblest passions, has very re- 
spectable powers; and mankind has agreed in admiring 
great talents for the stage' (Life 3. 184). 

227. 2. Mrs. Oldfteld, 1683-1730. An actress of humble 
origin, who progressed slowly until her first great success 
as Lady Betty Modish in Gibber's Careless Husband (1704). 
She was very beautiful, and a brilliant actress of both 
comedy and tragedy. The Tatler and The Spectator both 
praise her. She made many friends in the world of fashion, 
and received burial in Westminster Abbey. 



NOTES 455 

228. 30. Temptations of poverty. * When I was running 
about this town a very poor fellow, I was a great arguer 
for the advantages of poverty; but I was at the same time 
very sorry to be poor. Sir, all the arguments which are 
brought to or present poverty as no evil, show it to be 
evidently a great evil' {Life 1. 441). He writes to Bos- 
well (ibid. 3. 149): 'Poverty, my dear friend, is so great 
an evil, and pregnant with so much temptation, and so 
much misery, that I cannot but earnestly enjoin you to 
avoid it.' Again (p. 157) : 'Resolve not to be poor: what- 
ever you have, spend less.' He wrote two papers for the 
Rambler (INos. 53 and 57) to this effect. By 'poverty' he 
implies excess of expenses over income. 

229. 9. Sir Thomas Overbury, 1581-1613. He was the 
victim, by slow poison, of the wife of his friend, Robert 
Carr, Viscount of Rochester, and favorite of James I. 

230. 6. Vibber. While Johnson admitted that Gibber's 
Apology and his plays (especially The Careless Husband) 
had merit, he despised the man for his ' impenetrable im- 
pudence ' and other reasons. He said of him: 'It is won- 
derful that a man, who for forty years has lived with the 
great and the witty, should have acquired so ill the talent 
of conversation: and he had but half to furnish; for one 
half of what he said was oaths' (Life 2. 40). Again, 
' Taking from his conversation all that he ought not to 
have said, he was a poor creature' (ibid. p. 92). When the 
poet Fenton submitted a tragedy to him, he refused it with 
the brutal advice that Fenton try to support himself by 
honest labor. The play was accepted at the rival theatre, 
' and the brutal petulance of Gibber confuted, though per- 
haps not shamed, by general applause' (Lives 2. 260). 
See also 266. 15, and note. Gibber was enthroned hero 
of the Dunciad in the second edition. 

230. 8. Hill. Aaron Hill, 1685-1750, was first a sen- 
sational and unsuccessful promoter of money-making 
schemes, but was at length forced to become a theatrical 
manager and literary man. He first quarreled with Pope, 
then bored him with excessive flattery and consultation 
about his own compositions. He was a generous man, how- 
ever, but no critic. 



456 NOTES 

231. 15. Johnson loses no chance to condemn the prac- 
tice of servile dedication. See 324. 20. 

232. 18. Lady Mary Wortley Montague. Pope's some- 
time friend, whom he came to hate and to attack savagely. 
She is famous for two volumes of interesting letters, many 
of them written from Constantinople and Italy. 

233. 34. First of the company. Cf. 299. 18. Neither 
was Johnson. 

234. 1. Amusements. See Life 1. 250, 51 for a harm- 
less ' frisk ' of a night and a day in which Johnson joined 
Langton and Beauclerk, 

234. 24. Newgate. The condition of the common erimi- 
jials in Newgate may be inferred from John Wesley's letter 
to the Chronicle in 1761 : ' Of all the seats of woe on this 
side hell, few, I suppose, exceed or even equal Newgate. If 
any region of horror could exceed it a few years ago 
(about 1740), Newgate in Bristol did; so great was the 
filth, the stench, the misery and wickedness which shocked 
all who had a spark of humanity left.' See Lecky, England 
in the Eighteenth Century, chap. 4. 

236. 19. Page. Known as the ' hanging judge.' Pope 
wrote, Imitations of Horace 1. 81, 2: 

Slander or poison dread from Delia's rage, 
Hard words or hanging, if your Judge be — ■ — 



It is said (by Hawkins, note on Johnson's Pope) that Page 
sent his clerk to complain to Pope of this couplet, who 
said the blank could be filled by other monosyllabic names 
than the Judge's. ' But, sir,' said the clerk, ' the judge 
says that no other word will make sense of the passage.' 
Pope sent his respects to the Judge with the message that, 
having proved himself a poet as well as a judge, Page 
should fill up the blank as he pleased. 

238. 20. The queen. Lecky says of Queen Caroline: 
* This very remarkable woman, who governed her husband 
with an absolute sway in spite of his infidelities, and who 
often exhibited an insight into character, a force of ex- 
pression, and a political judgment worthy of a great states- 
man, was the firmest of all the friends of Walpole, and 
deserves a large share of the credit whith is given to his 



NOTES 457 

administration' (England in the Eighteenth Century, 
chap. 4). 

239. 35. Countess of Hertford. Thomson dedicated his 
Spring to her. It was her practice, says Johnson, probably 
on Savage's authority, ' to invite every summer some poet 
into the country to hear her verses and assist her studies. 
This honor was one summer conferred on Thomson, who 
took more delight in carousing with Lord Hertford and his 
friends than assisting her ladyship's poetical operations, 
and therefore never received another summons' (Life of 
Thomson, §16). 

241. 6. Equality. 'Equability' (Johnson's Diet.). Ob- 
solete in this sense. Apparently ' equanimity ' is yet too 
rare in this sense for Johnson's use. 

242. 10 ff. Doubtless it was the qualities here men- 
tioned that recommended Savage to Johnson's affection. 
JS T or was his 'resentment' (242. 22) against it. Johnson 
said of ' dear, dear Bathurst whom I loved better than ever 
1 loved any human creature ' that he was ' a man to my 
very heart's content: he hated a fool, he hated a rogue, and 
he hated a Whig; he was a very good hater' (Miscellanies 
1. 158, 204). 

245. 29 ff. From these paragraphs may be inferred John- 
son's defense of himself for his subsequent alteration of 
the sentiments expressed in London. See p. xvii. 

246. 30. The true author. Pope. See Johnson's Pope, 
§148. 

246. 33. Freedom of the press. Johnson was never 
strongly in its favor. ' It seems not more reasonable to 
leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers 
may be afterward censured, than it would be to sleep with 
the doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a 
thief (Life of Milton). 'In short, Sir, I have got no 
further than this: Every man has a right to utter what 
he thinks truth, and every man has a right to knock him 
down for it. Martyrdom is the test' (Life 4. 12). 

247. 11. Power of the crown. See p. Hi. 

247. 19. The Bathos, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry. 
In this skit, published by Swift and Pope, the letters had 
been prefixed, and many poets of the time had been made 



458 NOTES 

very angry supposing that the various initials referred to 
themselves. The Dedication says, ' the greatest part of 
them at random/ but Pope and Savage both well knew that 
the letters had personal significance, and the poets were 
justly angry. See Johnson's Pope, §148. The ' friend' here 
mentioned may have been Johnson himself. 

248. 18. Patron of literature. Though he spent a for- 
tune on pictures, Walpole had no deep interest in art or 
literature. He said : ' I totally neglected reading when I 
was in business, and to such a degree that I cannot now 
read a page' (Diet. Nat. Biogr. 59. 204A). See also 257. 
9ff.; 275. 17. On Walpole see notes on London 29, 30, 
51, 55. 

248. 22. A person of yet higher rank. See 286. 23. 

248. 25 ff. This paragraph touches upon the subject of 
Johnson's London in which the protests against Walpole 
and his regime are put into Savage's mouth. 

250. 14 ff. For Johnson's standard of criticism implied 
in these paragraphs see p. xv. 

250. 19. On the architectural figure see 76. 31, n. 

251. 26. Ten guineas. For London Johnson got ten 
guineas (Life 1. 124), and for The Vanity of Human 
Wishes fifteen (ibid., p. 193). 

251. 31. Such 'superstitious regard' is as far as possi- 
ble from Johnson's own method of composition. See pp. 
xiii, xxxv. 

252. 12. Booksellers. Though Johnson never made a 
good bargain with them, and though he once beat Osborne, 
the bookseller, because he was ' impertinent ' to him, yet 
he held them as a class in high regard. He said: 'The 
booksellers are generous, liberal minded men' (Life 1. 304). 
Among them the Dillys, Strahan, and Davies were his par- 
ticular friends. 

254. 34. Inconsistency of his writings with his conver- 
sation. See 215. 25, and note. 

256. 11. Inquisitiveness. Intellectual curiosity was 
highly valued and praised by Johnson. See p. xxxix; 
cf. 285. 28. 

256. 19. A critic on human life, i. e., a poet. Johnson 
often insists upon a knowledge of the world of men as 



NOTES 459 

indispensable to a poet and a scholar. See p. xxxvi; also 
110. 3; Rambler No. 137. p. 126; Xo. 180; Rasselas, chap. 
10; Vanity of Human Wishes 158. 

257. 9. One particular person. Sir Robert Walpole. See 
248. 18, and note. 

264. 1. Arts like these. Arts of self-delusion. Johnson 
suffered much from the habit of practising them. The 
Preface to the Dictionary is one of many of his confessions 
of it, and perhaps his most eloquent. 

265. 8. Error of his life. See 215. 25, and note. 

266. 15. Cibber. See 230. 6, and note. Cibber once 
brought Johnson one of his favorite odes to have his 
opinion of it. ' I could not bear such nonsense, and would 
not let him read it to the end; so little respect had I for 
that great man! (laughing) ' {Life 2. 92). 

266. 20. Volunteer Laureate. Johnson refers to this in 
London 70 (see note). 

266. 26. Mr. Urban, the nom de plume of Cave, the 
editor and publisher of the magazine, and Johnson's em- 
ployer in his early years. 

269. 18. Princess Anne. She was married to the Prince 
of Orange in 1734. The subject was not inspiring. * She 
was fat, ill-shaped, disfigured by the small-pox, and short, 
while the prince was deformed. The princess had leave to 
refuse him, but replied that she would marry him if he 
were a baboon. " Well then," said the King, " there is 
baboon enough for you"' (Diet. Sat. Biogr. 21. 171A). 

•269. 32. About this time. 1734. 

270. 5. Tory mob. Doubtless one of the popular Tory 
demonstrations against Walpole's Excise Bill. See London 
29, and note. 

271. 15. Dispute between the Bishop of London and the 
Chancellor. Dr. Bundle had been recommended to the 
bishopric of Gloucester by the Lord Chancellor, and his ap- 
pointment had been announced, but the Bishop of London 
interposed, really on account of Bundle's Low Church 
opinions. Johnson's High Church convictions are reflected 
in the language of this paragraph. 

275. 17. Walpole. See 248. 18, and note. 

375, 36. Lord Bolingbroke. Leader of the Tories when 



460 NOTES 

they were driven from power at the death of Queen Anne. 
He fled to France when threatened with impeachment, but 
reappeared after ten years, and tried to lead the opposition 
against Walpole, who was now firmly established. He was 
particularly active in defeating the Excise Bill (1733), but 
saw no further chance for himself, and retired in 1735. 
Doubtless it was Savage's eager literary endeavors to 
exalt Bolingbroke that drew forth Walpole's promise 
and professions of friendship, but he abandoned both 
when he saw no further danger in Bolingbroke. 
Savage's loud allegiance may have been merely refined 
blackmail. 

. 276. 6. The prince. Frederick, Prince of Wales. He 
had become Bolingbroke's friend, the opposer of Walpole, 
and quarreled violently and continually with his father 
and mother. ' The Prince's affable manners rendered him 
more popular in the country than the King, and his tastes 
inclined him to the brilliant literary and social circle 
which was in opposition to the ministry' (Lecky, England 
in the Eighteenth Century, chap. 3 ) . 

276. 30 ff. Johnson here expresses sentiments on emi- 
gration and retirement quite opposite to those of London 
9-18, but unaltered during the rest of his life. He in- 
variably opposed the illusive notions of America and other 
new countries which he here describes, and deplored emi- 
gration. ' To a man of mere animal life, you can urge iio 
argument against going to America, but that it will be 
some time before he will get the earth to produce. But a 
man of any intellectual enjoyment will not easily go and 
immerse himself and his posterity for ages in barbarism ' 
(Life 5.78). See also his amusing remark at 2.228. He 
blamed oppressive landlords for increasing emigration. 
The reader will recall Goldsmith's beautiful lines on emi- 
gration, Deserted Village 363-430. 

278. 3 ff. This paragraph contains one of his funda- 
mental reasons for Johnson's dislike of America. See p. 1; 
Vanity of Human Wishes 185 and note; Falkland's Islands. 

278. 35 ff. Perhaps Boswell knew Johnson's opinion here 
expressed when he once boasted that the Scotch were the 
first to abolish vails. ' Johnson : " Sir, you abolished vails, 



NOTES 461 

because you were too poor to be able to give them" ' (Life 
2.78). 

' It was said that a foreign minister, dining on a great 
occasion with a nobleman of the highest rank, usually ex- 
pended in this way as much as ten guineas, that a sum of 
two or three guineas was a common expenditure in great 
houses, and that a poor clergyman, invited to dine with his 
Bishop, not unfrequently spent in vails to the servants, at a 
single dinner, more than would have fed his family for a 
week' (Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, chap, 5). 

281. 8 rT. Johnson told Reynolds that 'one night in 
particular, when Savage and he walked around St. James 
Square for want of a lodging, they were not at all de- 
pressed by their situation; but in high spirits and brim 
full of patriotism, traversed the square for several hours, 
inveighed against the minister, and " resolved they would 
stand by their country " ' {Life 1. 164). 

282. 35. Subversion of all economy. For similar reasons 
Johnson was a troublesome guest to Mrs. Boswell. ' His 
irregular hours and uncouth habits, such as turning the 
candles with their heads downwards, when they did not 
burn bright enough, and letting the wax drop upon the 
carpet, could not but be disagreeable to a lady ' {Life 
2. 269, n. 1). 

285. 28. Xaturally inquisitive. Cf. 256. 11, and note. 

286. 10. Duck. Described in a note of Hawkesworth's 
on Swift, cited by Hill : ; Stephen Duck was a poor thresher, 
who having written some verses, they were shown to Queen 
Caroline, who made him her library-keeper at Richmond. 
He afterwards took orders, and was preferred to a living; 
but growing melancholy he at last drowned himself. 5 

286. 23. Duke of Chandos. Remembered chiefly for his 
wealth and for Pope's amusing account of his country-seat 
and its tasteless extravagance in Moral Essays 4. 79-168. 
Handel lived two years with him. 

288. 10. 1738. The preceding year Johnson first came 
to London ; this year he first met Savage, and wrote London, 
in which Savage is the speaker. 

291. 15 ff. Cf. p. 293. The reader will recall the story 
of Johnson and the shoes {London 162, n.). 



462 NOTES 

292. 27. Pastorals and songs. For Johnson's low opinion 
of pastoral poetry see p. xxvi; Milton in Lives 1.163-4; 
other references are given by Hill, ibid. 164, n. 2. 

592. 33. These expectations. How they are usually dis- 
appointed Johnson has shown in Rambler, JS T os. 42, 124, 135 ; 
Idler, JNo. 71. He considered life in the country ' a kind 
of mental imprisonment' {Life 4. 338). He once said: i No 
wise man will go to live in the country, unless he has some- 
thing to do which can be better done in the country ' 
(ibid. 3.253); and 'They who are content to live in the 
country are fit for the country' {ibid. 3.338). See Ad- 
venturer 102, p. 182. 

- 293. 8. Liberties of the Fleet. The notorious Fleet 
Prison stood a little to the north of Ludgate Circus. In 
certain stated regions surrounding it, called the liberty, 
prisoners for debt were allowed by special privilege to lodge, 
and within these bounds Savage takes refuge to avoid the 
persecution of his creditors. 

297. 18. Mr. Thomson, author of The Seasons, and 
Savage's friend. See 239. 35, n. Mr. Mallet, a friend of 
Thomson, and author of the ballad William and Margaret ; 
Rule Britannia, by Thomson, has sometimes been attributed 
to him. He is the subject of one of Johnson's Lives 
(3.400). 

299. 21. A place of commerce. Bristol was at this time 
the largest British town outside of London. Its prosperity 
was due to its rich trade with the American colonies. 

303. 16. My birthnight. He was forty-five. 

304. 11. Nash. The famous Beau Nash. See the fasci- 
nating Life of Nash by Goldsmith, who exhibits both his 
cruelty and his humanity. Nash, he says, ' could not stifle 
the natural impulse which he had to do good, but fre- 
quently borrowed money to relieve the distressed' (near 
end) . 

304. 15. On Newgate, Bristol, in Savage's time, see 
233. 24, n. Savage was of course exempted from the lot 
of a common prisoner. The miseries of debtors' prisons at 
the time were notorious; Johnson eloquently wrote against 
them in the Adventurer, Nos. 53, 62; Idler, Nos. 22 ; 38 (one 
of the best accounts). 



NOTES 463 

307. 6. His friend. Cave, the printer (Nichols). 

307. 26. Mr. 8 . 'Strong, of the Post-Office' 

(Xichols). 

309. 2. Conversation of criminals. Cf. 281. 8 ff., and 
note. Savage's range of observation of society was no wider 
than Johnson's. See p. xx, xxi; Rambler, Nos. 170, 171,, pp. 
144 ff. 

309. 17. Except one. Pope. 

311. 2. Seldom provoked to laughter. Chesterfield 
writes to his son (March 9, O. S., 1748) : ( I could heartily 
wish that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard 
to laugh while you live.' 

311. 32. Knowledge of life. See 256. 19, and note. 

312. 5. The graces. In the letter just quoted Chester- 
field recommends ' the graces ' to his son. 

314. 10. One piece. See 273. 23. 

314. 22. Affectation. An important principle in John- 
son's criticism; see p. xxvi. 

THE LIFE OF ADDISOX 

318. 23. Corbet. A college-mate of Johnson's at Pem- 
broke, who, Hawkins says, proposed to support Johnson at 
Oxford, but never did. 

319. 10. Chartreux. Other famous pupils of the 
' Charterhouse ' were Crashaw, Lovelace, Blackstone, John 
Wesley, Grote, and Thackeray. 

319. 30 ff. This story of Addison's severity with Steele 
Johnson got from Savage {Life 4. 53), but it has been 
doubted. Macaulay accepted it and defended Addison; 
cf. 224. 8ff. 

320. 26. Hill cites Boileau's Fragment d'un autre 
Dialogue, where he expressed his 'contempt of modern 
Latin.' 

320. 35 ff. This observation on modern Latin resembles 
his observations on the rimed couplet (see p. xxix) ; but 
Johnson had a higher regard for Latin than he here ex- 
presses (p. xxxii). 

321. 16. Sacheverell. One account makes him a college 
roommate of Addison. He was afterwards a fierce and 



464 NOTES 

narrow Tory, and preached a sermon on non-resistance 
which precipitated violent anti-Whig riots. 

321. 29 ff. As usual Johnson utters his protest against 
servility in literature; cf. 231. 15, n. 

321. 30. Montague. Lord Halifax, an able Whig 
financier, but no poet; he was very vain. Pope's Epistle 
to Arbuthnot satirizes him (231-248) as 'puffed by every 
quill,' and ' Fed with soft dedication all day long.' 

322. 14. Smith. Edmund Smith, subject of one of 
Johnson's Lives, who says of one of his Latin odes: 'Nor 
do I know where to find it equalled among the modern 
writers.' 

,322. 15. Praise. Mrs. Thrale said: 'I do not know for 
certain what will please Dr. Johnson; but I know for 
certain that it will displease him to praise anything, even 
what he likes, extravagantly' (Life 3. 225). 

322. 21. Learn the French language. An unusual 
course at that time. The general cultural intercourse be- 
tween England and France was just reviving after a lapse 
of nearly two centuries. See Texte, Rousseau and the 
Cosmopolitan Spirit in Literature, translated by J. W. 
Matthews, 1899. 

323. 9. Italian authors. One is Alberti, from whose 
Descrizione (1550) Chesterfield thought Addison had taken 
most of his remarks and classical references. See Hill's 
note. 

323. 12. Not a very severe censure. It was observed of 
Johnson's Journey to the 'Western Islands that a great part 
of it had been in his mind before he left London. He re- 
plied : ' A man must carry knowledge with him, if he would 
bring home knowledge' {Life 3. 301,2). 

323. 26. Blenheim. Marlborough's most famous victory. 
W T ith the Austrian Prince Eugene he defeated the French, 
and overthrew the military superiority which they had 
maintained for sixty years. Cf. Vanity of Human Wishes 
185, and note. 

323. 30. Some better poet. Cf. 352, 1, and note. 

324. 7. Simile of the Angel. See 352. 25, and note. 
324. 14. Italian operas. Addison afterwards ridiculed 

Italian opera in Spectator 5, 18, 20. Though it first ap- 



NOTES 465 

peared in England under Charles II., it did not become 
popular till the time of Queen Anne. 

324. 20. Duchess of Marlborough, The famous Sarah 
Jennings, who for a time controlled Queen Anne. Johnson 
once said of her that ' she had not superior parts, but was 
a bold, front less woman, who knew how to make the 
most of her opportunities in life' (Life 5. 175). 

324. 31. Wharton (1648-1715) was one of Walpole'a 
predecessors in corrupt methods. ' He spared no expense, 
took a pride in making his constituents drunk on the best 
ale, and knew all of the electors' children by name' [Diet. 
Nat. Biogr.). He wrote the words of the famous political 
song, Lillibulero. 

326. 19. Johnson has in mind his own difficulties as a 
periodical writer. Cf. his fine apology in the last number 
of The Rambler. In choice of material at least Addison 
and Steele had the advantage of him. ' They had the whole 
field of life before thein, untrodden and unsurveyed. . . . 
They that follow are forced to peep into neglected corners ' 
(Idler 3). Cf. pp. xviii, xix. 

326. 28. One of the first papers. No. 3, Vision of Public 
Credit, in which it appears that the Jacobites are enemies 
of public prosperity. 

327. 6. Casa. His II Galateo (1558) had been several 
times translated into English. 

Gastiglione. Johnson called The Courtier ' the best book 
that ever was written upon good breeding' (Life 5. 276). 
It appeared in 1528, and was first translated into English 
in 1561. Johnson occasionally cites it in his works. 

327. 16. La Bruyere. Les Caracteres de Theophraste 
traduite du Grec, avec les Caracteres et les Mceurs de ce 
Steele (1688). The British Museum has some twenty-one 
editions published before Johnson wrote his Addison. 

327. 29. Arbiter elegant iarum. From ' elegantiae arbiter ' 
of Tacitus, Ann. 16. 18. 

328. 14. L'Estrange's Observator. Entirely political, 
and devoted to maligning its opponents. It appeared be- 
fore 1679, three or four times a week. Leslie's Rehearsal 
appeared weekly during the early part of Anne's reign; 
Leslie was a clergyman who argued for non-resistance, ' a 



466 NOTES 

reasoner who was not to be reasoned against ' (Life 4. 
287, n.). 

328. 21. Royal Society. See 208. 7, and note. 

328. 30. A subsequent ivork. Freeholder 45 (Hill). 

328. 35. Initiated in the elegancies of knowledge. To 
young Miss Thrale Johnson writes : ' Do you read the 
Taller f They are part of the books which everybody should 
read, because they are the sources of conversation, there- 
fore make them part of your library' (Letters 2.352). 

329. 6. Steele in his last paper. And more particularly 
in his preface to the collected edition, 1710. 

329. 7. Budgell. His translation of the Characters of 
Theophrastus was praised by Addison in The Lover. No. 
39. 

329. 11. Aggravated. 'To make anything worse, by the 
addition of some particular circumstance, not essential ' 
(Johnson's Diet.), 

329. 35. ' Para mi/ etc. ' For me alone was Don Quixote 
born, and I for him.' These words are at the end of Don 
Quixote ( Hill ) . 

330. 13. Vapors of incipient madness. Insanity was 
the subject of Johnson's 'most dismal apprehension; and 
he fancied himself seized by it, or approaching to it, at 
the very time when he was giving proofs of a more than 
ordinary soundness and vigor of judgment' (Life 1. 66). 
He has portrayed such ' vapors ' in Rasselas, chapters .4 
and 44. 

330. 20. New man. ' Novus homo,' ' parvenu/ 

331. 6. Swift. In Journal to Stella, under Nov. 2, 
1711, Feb. 8, 1712 (Hill). 

331. 17. Gibber. In his Apology, ed. K. W. Lowe, 2. 128. 
On Cibber see 230. 6, and notes. 

331. 24. Think liberty in danger. Johnson always 
scorned such fears as imaginary. See p. li. 

332. 8. Poetical justice. Johnson refers to this opinion 
of Addison's in Rambler No. 93; see 100. 23, and note. 

332. 20. Heavily in clouds. The Cato begins: 

The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers, 
And heavily in clouds brings on the day, 
The great, the important day. 



NOTES 467 

332. 26. The Distressed Mother. By Ambrose Phillips 
('.Xamby Pamby'), acted in 1712. 

332. 32. Bolingbroke. One of the Tory leaders. See 
275. 36, n. Barton Booth (1681-1733) acted Cato. This 
success marked the climax of his career. His art was 
characterized by refinement, dignified reserve, and finished 
elocution. 

333. 4. Mrs. Porter. She acted Lucia. Johnson once 
speaking of actors he remembered said, 'Mrs. Porter in 
the vehemence of rage. ... I have never seen equalled' 
(Life 4. 243). She 'was so much the favorite of her time 
that she was welcome on the stage when she trod it by 
the help of a stick. . . . Sue was a woman of very gentle 
and ladylike manners' [Letters 2. 344). 

333. 25. Censurer of Corneille's Cid. Richelieu and 
other members of the Academy. Corneille was partly con- 
soled in the controversy over his play by its popular suc- 
cess. On Johnson's high confidence in popular approval 
see p. xxvii. 

334. 19. Jeffreys. His verses were left anonymously 
with the printer, and Addison never knew who wrote them. 
His other work is forgotten. 

334. 33. Unanswered and therefore little read. To one 
who had been attacked Johnson said: 'Nay, Sir, do not 
complain. It is advantageous to an author that his book 
should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttle- 
cock. If it be struck at only one end of the room, it will 
soon fall to the ground' {Life 5. 400). 

335. 9. Guardian of the Lizards. The editor represents 
that he has been chosen guardian to Marmaduke Lizard by 
his father Sir Ambrose. The Guardian contains four pa- 
pers on the nature of ants, three on the prolusions of 
Strada, and papers on the Tall Club and the Little Club. 

337. 32. Criticism on Milton. The eighteen papers on 
this subject constitute one of the earliest critical treatments 
of Paradise Lost. Johnson took a suggestion from them; 
see p. xiv, n. The popular interest in Milton was much 
greater in the Eighteenth Century than it has ever been 
since. 

337. 33. With the accession of George I. in 1714 be- 



468 NOTES 

gan the ascendancy of the Whigs, which lasted for nearly 
a half century. 

337. 34. Zeal of Addison, for the Whig party. 

338. 5. Choice of expression. Cf. 340. 1. But when he 
had a congenial subject his composition was highly spon- 
taneous. See 346. 31. 

338. 19. Tory Foxhunter. Freeholder 22, 44, 47. 

338. 23. Milton, In the Defense of England against 
Salmasius, chap. 8. Charles II. during his exile had hired 
Salmasius for a hundred Jacobuses, it is said, to defend 
his father's memory. Milton sneers at these as the very 
dregs of an exiled King's purse. Oldmixon sneers at the 
poverty of the same court. See his History of England, 
1730, p. 419 (Hill). 

340. 1. Quest of fine expression. See 338. 8, and note. 

340. 26. Their ancient rivalry. See 346. 12, n. 

340. 31. A nearer tuay, i. e., by intrigue or flattery. 
Johnson does not forget that Sunderland was a Whig. 

340. 35. Tillotson. Johnson thought less of Tillotson 
(Life 3. 247), and only occasionally cites him in the 
Dictionary. 

341. 11. Language of Homer. 'Who then among the 
gods set the twain at strife and variance ' (11. 1. 7) . 

341. 34. Instigation of Whiggism. In this discussion, 
as in the Parliamentary Debates, Johnson takes care ' that 
the Whig dogs should not have the best of it ' (Misc. 1. 379). 

342. 22. Lines of Cato (3. 5, last speech). 

Remember, O my friends, the laws, the rights, 
The generous plan of power, delivered down 
From age to age by your renowned forefathers 
(So dearly bought, the price of so much blood). 
O let it never perish in your hands ! 
But piously transmit it to your children. 

342. 32. ' Bellum plusquam civile.' Adapted from 
Lucan's Pharsalia 1. 1. 

342. 35. The instability of friendship. Johnson always 
laments it. ' If a man does not make new acquaintances 
as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left 
alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in good re- 
pair ' (Life 1. 300). He frequently discussed it in his 
essays. See Rambler 40, 64, 99, 160; Idler 23. 



NOTES 469 

343. 8ff. This paragraph should be read with Rambler 
60, p. 87. Boswell's passion for his subject so possessed 
him that he did not regard the evil consequences here men- 
tioned by Johnson. 

343. 28 ff. Johnson himself was afterwards greatly af- 
flicted with both asthma and dropsy, and died of the latter. 

344. 7. Lord Warwick. Addison's stepson. 

345. 2. tiicift. Johnson refers to Addison's appoint- 
ment as secretary in 1717, but Addison did not, as Johnson 
supposed, go to Ireland this time. 

345. 5. Steele, in his dedication of The Drummer to 
Congreve, ' Remarkable ' he quotes from Tickell's Preface. 

345. 11. Chesterfield. Letters to his Godson, ed. Car- 
narvon, p. 185 (Hill). 

345. 12. Used to say of himself. Of this famous re- 
mark Johnson once said : ' He had not the retort ready, Sir ; 
he had prepared it beforehand' {Life 3. 339). Hill has 
traced it to The Tatler and Burnet's History of his own 
Times. 

346. 12. The wretched quarrel between Addison and 
Pope arose over Pope's translation of Homer, which Addi- 
son was said to have ranked below a rival version by 
Tickell. The story is told b} T Johnson in his Pope [Lives 
3. 128 ff.), and more critically in Elwin's Life of Pope 
(Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, 1. 158 ff.). Pope's ter- 
rible lines on Addison {Epistle to Arbuthnot 193-214), pub- 
lished after Addison's death, are well-known. 

346. 27. Critical eyes. See 256. 19, and note. 

346. 31. Easily communicate. But with an uncongenial 
subject he found composition difficult. See 338. 8, 340. 1, 
and note. 

347. 4. Written very fast. See p. xiii, n. 2. 
347. 11. Cato. The last six lines are: 

From hence let fierce contending nations know 

What dire effects from civil discord flow. 

'Tis this that shakes our country with alarms, 

And gives up Rome a prey to Roman arms, 

Produces fraud, and cruelty and strife, 

And robs the guilty world of Cato's life. 

347. 26. Button's coffee-house, in Russell St., Covent 
Garden, was the resort of wits in Addison's time, as Will's 



470 NOTES 

had been in Dryden's. For many interesting anecdotes of 
the place see Timbs' Clubs and Club Life in London 323-332. 

348. 8. Enslaved by his auxiliary. Silenus, i. e., drunk- 
enness. Johnson never drank to excess. ' He seems to 
have been an abstainer from about 1736 to at least as late as 
1757, and from about 1765 to the end of his life (1784) ' 
(Hill's note on Life 1. 103, where he discusses the subject 
in full detail). 

348. 12. Mandeville. The anecdote is told by Hawkins 
in his History of Music 5. 316, n. (Hill), but Johnson prob- 
ably heard Hawkins tell it. Cf. Works, ed. Hawkins, 
3. 71, n. Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733) is known for his 
Fable of the Bees. His social instincts and affiliations 
were not high. He shows by paradoxical reasoning that 
all civilization is developed from the vicious propensities of 
men. Johnson had read Mandeville in his youth. * He did 
not puzzle me; he opened my views into real life very 
much' (Life 3. 292). 

348. 27. Johnson approved this device in argument. 
* " There is as much charity in helping a man down hill, 
as in helping him up hill." Boswell. ct I don't think there 
is as much charity." Johnson. " Yes, Sir, if his tendency 
be downwards. Till he is at the bottom he flounders; get 
him once there and he is quiet" 7 (Life 5. 243). 

349. 26. Taught others. After Falstaflf's ' I am not 
only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other 
men' (B#nry IV. pt. 2, 1.2.11). 

349. 29. Long connected gaiety with vice. As a result 
of the Restoration and the reaction against Puritanism. 

349. 43. 'Above all Greek,' etc. Pope To Augustus. 

350. 2. ' Turned many,' etc. Dan. 12. 3. Johnson's 
singular reverence kept him from frequent adaptation of 
Scriptural phrase, and made him disapprove of it in others. 
Cf. lntrod., p. xxviii, xxxv, Boswell says, * He disapproved 
of introducing scripture phrases into secular discourse' 
(Life 2. 213). 

350. 19. A great writer. Warburton (Hill). 

351. 14. Compliment Cromwell. Preposterous, of course, 
to an age and a man who saw no virtue in Cromwell. 
Carlyle was one of the first to rehabilitate him. 



NOTES 471 

351. 33. Gazette in Rhyme. Warton's Essay on Pope. 
For the implication of this criticism see London 72 and 
note, Vanity of Human Wishes 177. 

352. 1. Many of our own writers. Among them were 
J. Phillips (by request of the ministry), Prior, Congreve, 
John Wesley's father, and Dennis. See Lives 2. 186, n. 2. 

352. 7. 'Mighty bone.' Par. Lost 11. 642. 

352. 25. Simile of the Angel: 

'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved, 

That, in the shock of charging hosts unmoved, 

Amidst confusion, horror, and despair, 

Examined all the dreadful scenes of war ; 

And taught the doubtful battle where to rage. 

In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed, 

To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid, 

Inspired repulsed battalions to engage, 

So when an angel by divine command 

With rising tempests shakes a guilty land, 

Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past. 

Calm and serene he drives the furious blast ; 

And, pleased th' Almighty's orders to perform, 

Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm. 

—11. 279-92. 

353. 3. Horace. Odes 4. 2. 5-7; 27-32. 

354. 6. Dr. Madden, a name ichich Ireland ought to 
honor. Yet he was 'a great V nig,' and Johnson once 
* castigated ' a poem of his at his request. ' However, the 
Doctor was very thankful, and very generous, for he gave 
me ten guineas, which was to me at the time a great sum ' 

{Life 2. 321; 1. 318). 

355. 16. itfuch sentiments. Quotations from Cato are 
still in circulation: 

'Tis not in mortals to command success 

But we'll do more, Sempronius — we'll deserve it. 

Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover, 
Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense. 

A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty 

Is worth a whole eternity of bondage. 

— This pleasing hope, this fond desire, 
This longing after immortality. 

Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man. 

From hence, let fierce contending nations know 
What dire effects from civil discord flow. 



472 NOTES 

355. 27. Dialogue too declamatory. He is thinking, 
doubtless, of his own Irene. Garrick said, adapting John- 
son's own words, ' When Johnson writes tragedy, declama- 
tion roars, and passion sleeps' (Misc. 1. 387; cf. 23. 32). 

359. 16. Dryden. In the Preface io the Fables, Works, 
ed. Scott and Saintsbury, 11. 243 (Hill). 

359. 36. Excellence of a translator. Of translation 
Johnson said : ' We must try its effect as an English poem ; 
that is the way to judge of the merit of a translation. 
Translations are, in general, for people who cannot read 
the original* (Life 3. 256). 

360. 20. By taste rather than by principles. Cf. John- 
son's method, p. xxvii, and the chaotic impressionism of 
present-day judgment. 

360. 21 ff. An interesting account of literary taste 
about 1780, and of the common opinion of Addison. Gen- 
eral culture had greatly increased with growing democracy. 
At this time Burns was just of age, Wordsworth a bey of 
ten, Scott was nine, and Coleridge eight. 

361. 26 ff. Johnson's scorn for the ballads, and for imi- 
tations of them, is notorious. His parodies are well- 
known; see Life 2. 136, n. 4; 212, n. 4. 

362. 24. Aggravation. ' The act of making heavy ' 
(Diet.). 

362. 30. Enthusiastic. In the peculiar eighteenth cen- 
tury sense, as often applied to the Methodists. Johnson 
defines enthusiasm, ' a vain belief in private revelation ; 
a vain confidence of divine favor or communication' (Diet.). 

363. 5. 'Mille habet,' etc. Tibullus 4. 2. 14. 

363. 28. Days and nights. An allusion, as Hill shows, 
to Horace, Ays Poetica, 268: 

Vos exeinplaria Grseca 
Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna. 

VERSES OiN LEVETT 

Robert Levett. ' An obscure practiser in physic amongst 
the lower people, his fees being sometimes very small 
sums, sometimes whatever provisions his patients could 
afford him; but of such extensive practice in that way, 
that Mrs. Williams has told me, his walk was from Houns- 



NOTES 473 

ditch to Marybone. It appears from Johnson's diary that 
their acquaintance commenced about the year 1746; and 
such was Johnson's predilection for him, and fanciful 
estimation of his moderate abilities, that I have heard him 
say he should not be satisfied, though attended by all the 
College of Physicians, unless he had Mr. Levett with him. 
Ever since I was acquainted with Dr. Johnson, and many 
years before, as I have been assured by those who knew 
him earlier, Mr. Levett had an apartment in his house or 
his chambers, and waited upon him every morning, through 
the whole course of his late and tedious breakfast. He was 
of a strange grotesque appearance, stiff and formal in 
his manners,, and seldom said a word while any com- 
pany was present' {Life 1. 243). He was an English 
waiter in a Parisian coffee-house when discovered by some 
French surgeons, who taught him orally what he knew of 
medicine. He died at nearly eighty, three years before 
Johnson's death, who missed him deeply through the rest 
of his life. See p. xxi. 

10. Obscurely wise. Hill (Life 4. 138 n. 1) cites Addi- 
son, Cato 4. 3: 

Content thyself to be obscurely good. 

Coarsely kind. ' Levett, madam, is a brutal fellow, 
but I have a good regard for him; for his brutality is in 
his maimers, not in his mind' (Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, 
1778, near beginning). 

32. Eightieth year. ' If you want events, here is Mr. 
Levett just come in at fourscore, from a walk to Hamp- 
stead, eight miles, in August' {Letters 2. 193). 

35. ' Poor Levett died in his bed the other day, by a 
sudden stroke; I suppose not one minute passed between 
health and death; so uncertain are human things' (Life 
4. 142). The night previous to Levett's death Johnson had 
resolved that wheresoever he might abide, he should keep 
Levett with him (ibid. 4. 145). 

LETTERS 

366. Strahan. Printer of the Dictionary, and friend of 
Johnson. Apparently he is acting as intermediary between 
Johnson and the combined publishers of the Dictionary. 



474 NOTES 

The publication was a trying business, since Johnson was 
desultory, as usual, and the money to be paid him had been 
advanced far beyond his performance of his task. Evidently 
he had asked for more and it had been refused unless he 
* write ' more copy. Johnson therefore threatens a strike. 

When Johnson's messenger returned from delivering the 
last sheet of the book, Johnson asked him, ' Well, what 
did he say ? ' * Sir ( answered the messenger ) , he said, 
thank God I have done with him.' 'I am glad (replied 
Johnson, with a smile) that he thanks God for any thing' 
(Life 1. 287). For Johnson's terms with the publishers 
see p. 24. 

366. 3. Stuart. One of Johnson's five Scotch amanu- 
enses. 

367. 1. ' Indeed I never did exchange letters regularly but 
with dear Miss Boothby ' (Letters 1. 65). She was a lady 
of high breeding and piety, whom he had met in Derbyshire 
some fifteen years earlier. She died eight days after this 
letter was written, and perhaps never saw it. See Letters 
1. 45-52. 

367. 4. Law. Referring to one of W T illiam Law's works. 
His Serious Call was instrumental in the conversion»of both 
Johnson and John Wesley. 

367. 13. Burney. Dr. Charles Burney, father of Fanny 
Burney, the novelist and diarist; he was afterwards one of 
Johnson's dearest friends. See Johnson's last letter, p. 391. 

368. 1. New edition. His Shakespeare, not published 
till 1765. Churchill laughed at the delay (Ghost 3. 801) : 

He for subscribers baits his hook, 

And takes their cash ; but where's the book? 

368. 16 ff. This, and the next five letters were written 
within the week of his mother's death, which occurred on 
January 20 or 21. She was ninety years old. She could 
hardly have read or heard more than two of these letters. 
Ten years before he was dreading her death as 4 one of 
the few calamities on which I think with terror' (Life 
1. 212, n.l). 

368. 18. Miss. Miss Lucy Porter 3 Johnson's step- 
daughter, who cared for Mrs. Johnson. 



NOTES 475 

368. 31. Debts. Rasselas was written ' in the evenings 
of one week ' soon after her death to earn the money for 
the discharge of these debts. 

368. 34. Twelve guineas. Six, at least, were borrowed. 

369. 11. Kitty. Catherine Chambers. See 394. 14, n. 

372. 12. The Earl of Bute. Then Prime Minister. 
Johnson acknowledges the pension on the occasion of the 
first payment. See London 51, n. 

373. 1. Langton. As a youth he had sought Johnson's 
acquaintance after reading The Rambler. 

373. 19. The Club. The famous Literary Club, founded 
in 1764. See Boswell's account of it at the beginning of 
that year (Life 1. 477-81). 

373. 29. Maintained the newspapers. His Shakespeare 
started a controversy among the critics. 

373. 30. Risen every morning. A resolution, as he said, 
' always occurring' {Misc. 1. 67). A week before he wrote: 
' I have never, I thank God, since New Year's day deviated 
from the practice of rising' {Misc. 1. 37). Cf. 74. 19, n. 

374. 1. Dyer. A quiet, but very learned member. Gold- 
smith was once talking loosely about music; at length, 
Dyer, on request, gave his opinion. ' Why,' said Goldsmith, 
' you seem to know a good deal of this matter.' ' If I had 
not,' said Dyer quietly, ' I should not, in this company, 
have said a word upon the subject' (Life 4. 11, n. ). 

374. 2. Nugent. A Roman Catholic physician, Burke's 
father-in-law. 

374. 12. Boswell had w T ritten complaining of Johnson's 
long silence, and worrying, as often he did, about the 
imagined falling off of Johnson's regard. He also proposed 
the tour in the Hebrides, which they took together two 
years later. 

374. 30. * Tristitiam,' etc. Horace, Odes 1. 26. 1. 

374. 34. ' Sive per, ' etc. Ibid. 1. 22. 5. 

375. 2. Lord Elibank. A Scottish friend of Boswell's. 
He wrote : ' Old as I am, I shall be glad to go five hundred 
miles to enjoy a day of his (Johnson's) company' (Life 
5. 181). And Johnson said: ' I was never in Lord Elibank's 
company without hearing something' (ibid. 3. 24). 

375. 11. Ashbourne, Derbyshire. Here his old school 



476 NOTES 

friend Taylor had a fine seat, and hither he often came to 
visit. But he tired of the 'vacancy' of the life there. 
Cf. pp. 182 ff. Taylor bred fine cattle, and he and John- 
son were very proud of his great bull. 

375. 31. Macpherson. One of Johnson's most famous 
letters. In 1762 Macpherson had published The Works of 
Ossian, which, he insisted, Avere translated from manu- 
scripts of the ancient Celtic poet's works. Johnson 
suspected a mere forgery and boldly said so in print, but 
no manuscripts were ever shown. Macpherson privately 
threatened Johnson with violence, and this letter of John- 
son's ' put an end to our correspondence.' The two lie 
near each other in the Abbey. 

376. 15. Ralph. Mrs. Thrale's son in his second year. 
He died a month later. Queeney, Harry, Susey, and Sophy, 
are her other children. 

Baretti. Author, teacher of Italian, and friend of John- 
son since about 1750. About 1770 he went to live at the 
Thrales', but quarreled and left in 1776, 

376. 25. Miss A , Hill suggests may be a Miss Adey, 

niece of Mrs. Cobb ( see end of the letter ) . Both were 
* great admirers' of Johnson (Life 2. 466). The other 
ladies are all old Lichfield friends, who entertain him 
whenever he returns to his native town. Stowhill was the 
home of Mrs. Aston, and of her sister Mrs. Gastrel. Lucy 
is his stepdaughter, Miss Porter. 

377. 3. Small letters. About an epitaph for Mrs. 
Thrale's mother. 

377. 30. < Suadentque,' etc. Vergil, Mn. 2. 9; 4. 81. 
Somnos in Vergil. 

378. 12. Lord Auchinleck. Boswell and his father had 
seldom been on good terms with each other; Auchinleck 
did not approve his son's pursuit of Johnson and other 
great men. The birth of an heir, however, has brought 
reconciliation. 

378. 15. For Mrs. Boswell's dislike of Johnson see 379. 
22, n., and p. xlviii ; 282. 35, n. 

378. 30. Dr. Pearce, Bishop of Rochester, had con- 
tributed a few notes to Johnson's Dictionary. After his 
death was published a Biblical commentary, edited by a 



I 



NOTES 477 

Mr. Derby, for which Johnson, in gratitude to the memory 
of Pearce, wrote this dedication to the King. Though he 
never dedicated his own works, he often wrote dedications 
for others. ' He believed he had dedicated to all the Royal 
Family round' (Life 2. 2). 

379. 22. Mrs. Boswell disliked Johnson from the time 
he visited Edinburgh in 1773. After four years she made 
overtures of peace in a little present, and Johnson ac- 
knowledges the reconciliation which he had long desired. 
See p. xliv; 282. 35, n. 

381. The mock gravity of this letter is similar to that 
of Rambler ISC 117, on life in a garret (p. 110). 

381. 8. Anch' io. i I, too, arn a painter.' Correggio's 
exclamation at first seeing the works of Raphael. 

382. 11. The 'debate' was a quarrel at Percy's house 
which arose over a discussion of Pennant's Scotland. They 
were in a few moments reconciled, and Boswell afterwards 
got Johnson to write this letter to remove any unfavorable 
impression of Dr. Percy in the mind of his relative, Lord 
Percy, who had been present. See Life 3. 271-78; cf. 
225. 17, n. 

383. 11. Elphinston was an old friend of Johnson's who 
had translated many of the mottoes from The Rambler. 
Eighteen years earlier Johnson had written to condole with 
him for the loss of his mother; see Life 1. 211. Johnson suf- 
fered most poignant distress at the death of his wife in 
1752 {Life 1. 234-42). 

383. 26. ( rov TTp&Tov,' etc. Adapted, as Hill shows, 
from Aristotle, Metaphysics 3. 8. ' The Prime Mover, him- 
self immovable.' 

884. 9. Lives. Lives of the Poets. 

384. 13. Mitre. The tavern in Fleet Street opposite 
Fetter Lane, whither they had gone soon after their first 
meeting eighteen years before. It was then Johnson's 
1 frequent place of resort ... where he loved to sit up 
late' (Life 1. 399). 

384. 20. Mr. Thrale had died April 4, and was buried 
the 11th. 'And with him were buried many of my hopes 
and pleasures ... I felt almost the last flutter of his 
pulse, and looked for the last time upon the face that 



478 NOTES 

for fifteen years had never been turned upon me but with 
respect or benignity' (Miscellanies 1. 96). Cf. the prayer 
on this occasion, p. 396. 

385. Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Desmoulins made their 
home with him; cf. p. xxi; Frank Barber was his colored 
servant; for Levett, see 264 and notes; for Mrs. Cobb and 
Miss Adey, see 376. 25, n. 

386. 1. Sir Joshua had had a slight paralytic stroke. 

386. 19. Mr. Crable's poem. The Village. Crabbe had 
come to London in 1780. In the extreme of poverty and 
despair he appealed to Burke, who mentioned him to 
Reynolds, who called Johnson's attention to him. It was 
Crabbe's purpose to abolish fantastic nonsense about rural 
life and 

paint the cot 
As truth will paint it, and as Bards will not. 

387. 5. Miss Sophy. Mrs. Thrale's daughter, now four- 
teen. 

387. 13. Purpose to do more. The thought of these 
sentences is abundantly illustrated in his Prayers and 
Meditations. 

387. 21. Metaphysics, romances. Johnson loved both; 
see p. lv; 61. 13, n. 

387. 28. Dr. Taylor. See 375. 11, n. 

388. 10. Mrs. Williams. See 385. 16, n. 

388. 18. Mr. Hector. Johnson's schoolfellow, with 
whom he lived six months after leaving Oxford. 

388. 24. Miss Jane was his god-child, daughter of Ben- 
nett Langton (see 373. 1, and n.), now in her seventh 
year. Of this letter Boswell says : ' He took the trouble to 
write it in a large round hand, nearly resembling printed 
characters, that she might have the satisfaction of reading 
it herself (Life 4. 271). 

389. 7 ff. When Johnson first learned from Mrs. Thrale 
that she was to marry the Italian music-master, Piozzi, 
he wrote her a rough and impassioned remonstrance. She 
replied, asking him that, unless his opinion should change, 
their friendship of twenty years should cease. This letter 
is the reply. Mrs. Thrale was now a widow of forty, with 



Mf\RUl95Q 



NOTES 479 

a number of children, and Johnson feared some disgrace 
in her marrying a foreigner and a Romanist. 

389. 12. / therefore breathe, etc. Possibly an inter- 
polation by Mrs. Thrale; it does not sound like John- 
son. It was suspected by Baretti, but he hated Mrs. 
Thrale. 

389. 33. Irremeable stream. Cf. Vergil, /En. 6. 424, 
1 ripam irremeabilis undae,' trans, by Dryden, ' the ir- 
remeable way/ 

390. lift'. During Johnson's last summer Boswell, 
Reynolds, and others of his friends had, without Johnson's 
knowledge, applied to the Government, through "the Lord 
Chancellor, for a gift of money which might enable John- 
son to spend the winter in Italy. When Johnson heard of 
their kind efforts for him he broke down, and left the 
room {Life 4. 337). Thurlow, when this endeavor failed, 
proposed another plan, whereupon Johnson wrote this letter. 

391. 9 fT. This was Johnson's last letter. He had re- 
turned from his last visit to his friends in Lichfield, Ash- 
bourne, and Oxford. 

392. 1. Johnson's wife died March 28, 1752. His grief 
was agonizing, bee Life 1. 234-40. 

393. 6 ff. Three weeks later he began The Idler. 

393. 27. Cf. his letters to his dying mother, pp. 368 fT. 

394. 14. About 1724. At the age of fifteen. Catherine 
Chambers and Johnson were of the same age. Johnson's 
father died in 1731, his brother in 1737, his mother in 
1759. When his mother died he wrote: 'Tell Kitty that I 
shall never forget her tenderness to her mistress ' (369. 11). 
She continued to live with Johnson's step-daughter at 
Lichfield. 

397. 4. Thrale died April 4. See Johnson's letter to 
Mrs. Thrale, 384, and note. 

397. 30. Johnson died December 13. 



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